Should High School Students be able to Grade Their Teachers?

Teachers are graded through standardized testing and observations from the administrators, but should students be included in the conservation, too? After all, they are the ones who spend the most time with their teachers. Students can offer insights and observations about teachers that school administrators and the teacher themselves might otherwise miss.

Students are entitled to their own opinion about the teachers they have. According to Myles Lewis at The Daily Advertiser, “By students having the ability to grade teachers, it allows teachers to see their progress and be able to make their class more enjoyable for the students.” The more the students are into the class, the more their grades improve. The teachers are accountable for making an environment for students to learn and feel safe in and should be able to know if they are doing a great job or not.

Some students may be too immature to evaluate their teachers, but having a students input on how their teacher is performing in the classroom is better than an adult supervisor. If you have more than half of the class sleeping, then maybe that is an indication that the lesson is boring and the majority of students are not learning. Additionally, by allowing students to grade teachers, it develops a better environment for the kids to learn, understand, and enjoy without wasting class time.

College students are given many opportunities to review and evaluate their teachers and are able to grade their professors as a kind of an end of year evaluation, and “ratemyprofessor.com” is a great website where you can find reviews about a school or teacher. They are many reviews that provide helpful information on the school you might want to attend or professor you might want to look into.

As the students get older, they are asked questions such as, “do you think all of your classmates are treated fairly?” or  “are you challenged on a daily basis?”, but none of the actual surveys are shared with administrators. They are used by the teachers to reflect on and improve their own work, but it is not always an easy adjustment for teachers. It can build anxiety and concern as to how it will be used, but once they receive the feedback, they make real changes. In understanding a student’s true potential, educators only scratch the surface through standardized testing, and it is somewhat understandable why students are graded in this fashion.

The U.S government complains that our schools are not in the top rankings on a worldwide scale, yet the only “solution” that officials offer is to lengthen the number of school days. Why would lengthening the school year help if you have teachers that do not know if they are doing anything wrong? No one will find out if teachers are inadequate if the students cannot grade them. At the end of the year, when a couple of teachers hand out their teacher evaluations, students usually groan.

This is hardly effective because there was no emphasis on the importance of the survey, therefore students assume it was just a busy work assignment before summer starts. Let a select few students help out with teacher evaluations on a non-bias grading criteria so teachers can reach their fullest potential.