In the first installment of this exciting new blog series, Todd and Kate offer their perspectives on the controversial topic of the use of student feedback in 300 words or less. Many teachers survey their students during the year on their performance; for a variety of reasons, others feel the results of student feedback surveys are untrustworthy. In light of new research, we in Washington are again considering the idea of including results of these surveys as a part of a teacher's evaluation. Some still aren't buying in, though. Read on to hear what Todd and Kate think. Respectful comments are welcome. Enjoy.
Much is at stake for our students these days, and I pride myself on being the best teacher I can be every single day. I only trust my students’ feedback implicitly. I gratefully listen, but with caveats, to parents (who might be less likely to understand pedagogy), administrators (who are often too busy to really know the heart of our work), mentors (who many districts cannot afford), and colleagues (who have little time to observe and mentor.) But the kids are there every single day. They know what I did right. And wrong.
At the end of 4th grade, on my self-imposed, annual, year-end survey, I got dinged by Gillian. My offense? Asking her to wait until 5th grade to test into reading level Z. A bazillion times I told her: it’s just increased mature content. The reading skills are identical. I made a choice she didn’t like. It’s an unintended consequence.
In considering my professional evaluation, I have questions about the global application of student evaluation surveys. Like many new and exciting ideas in education, I suspect good intent will lose quality in execution. I envision a morphed, soulless survey in a shaky, standard, blanketed application, applicable to all but valuable to none. I question whether assessing me via bubbles captures the essence of my classroom; Do kids recognize what’s good for them; How will Sarah be assessed by her EBD kids; Juli’s medically fragile kids can’t comment; I wonder how primary kids’ thoughts will be collected; How about incarcerated youth; How would we capture the opinions of high school kids who’ve dropped out?
Some things, like this, belong in the “best practices” column, and not the “quantify & globally apply” column. This is strictly a best practice. Listening to our students is powerful. Let’s keep it so.
Todd says:
Who spends the most time observing teachers in the classroom? Administrators? Principals? Peers? Coaches? The answer is none of the above. In reality, students spend far more time observing classroom teachers than any other group. While they may not be recording their observations on official-looking forms, they perceive far more than the majority of educators probably realize.
Student perception surveys have long been regarded as biased and unreliable. But that myth was recently dispelled by Dr. Ronald Ferguson, Director of The Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University. He led the development of the student surveys and analysis methods used in the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project, a three-year study which included 3,000 teachers from seven urban school districts.
The MET project revealed student perceptions do predict learning outcomes and should be taken seriously by policy makers and educators. Not only are they consistent and reliable, they are a better predictor of student achievement than either classroom observations or test scores. Quality student surveys actually provide detailed insights about teaching and learning, including attributes not measured by standardized tests or principals.
For example, students were asked how strongly they agree with statements such as “My teacher wants us to share our thoughts,” and “l Iike the way we learn in this class.” Not surprisingly, there was a strong correlation between agreement with MET statements and higher student achievement levels. Of course there are obvious cautions, but there are cautions using classroom observations and test scores too.
Teacher evaluations should be based on multiple measures, given multiple times, over multiple years. We shouldn’t be satisfied with only two measures - classroom observations and test scores. When asked the right questions, students provide valuable feedback about teaching and learning. Student perception surveys would be a healthy addition to our current evaluation model.
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