In light of the coming Congressional debate over the No Child Left Behind Act, improving teacher effectiveness is a topic that must be addressed. Instead of reprimanding teachers and schools for not performing up to standards on high-stakes tests, we should give teachers an opportunity to self-reflect and grow in a safe and encouraging environment. In particular, districts should explore less-conventional means, like using student surveys to provide teachers with constructive feedback. These surveys can augment existing teacher assessments and enable teachers to gain a new perspective.
Unfortunately, teachers in most public school districts often receive minimal feedback on their work. The New Teacher Project, an educational nonprofit, found that the feedback that comes from formal teacher evaluations, which are used to measure the effectiveness of each teacher, categorize and rank teachers, reward those at the top, and fire those at the bottom, is not as effective as intended, as too many principals go through the routine of visiting classrooms but give virtually all teachers the same “satisfactory” rating. Since teachers in many districts receive inadequate professional development and minimal feedback, student surveys would allow them to gain more insight into their teaching style, strengths, and weaknesses. This insight can be instrumental to improving teacher effectiveness and student performance.
While colleges use student feedback extensively, it is uncommon for elementary and secondary schools to ask students about their learning experiences. Students in many districts have no avenue to voice their opinion and provide constructive criticism and feedback, even though a great portion of their youth is spent engaging in school activities. Rather than ignoring their experience, school districts should view students as holding a wealth of novel information on teacher effectiveness.
Emily Banks (right) from the U.S. Department of Education observes elementary school teacher Lisa Jones (center).
Studying Student Feedback
The effectiveness of student feedback depends on students’ maturity. Current research shows that before fourth grade, students do not provide reliable responses on surveys. However, surveys with language tailored to the proper developmental level can produce reliable and valid scores for students in upper elementary and secondary schools. In addition, student ratings have been shown to correlate well with measures of student achievement on reading, language arts, and mathematics tests. In fact, research shows that student ratings of teachers may be more highly correlated with student achievement than ratings given by principals and the teachers themselves.
Not only are students’ inputs valid, but also they can provide teachers with a unique perspective that class observers cannot. Students spend around 180 hours with instructors throughout the course of an entire school year, as opposed to the 1 to 1.5 hours that evaluators spend over the course of one to six days. Since students spend significantly more time with their teachers and are the most direct consumers of teachers’ services, they may have a deeper knowledge of certain teaching characteristics or weaknesses that observers miss in the brief amount of time they evaluate teachers.
As the 2012 National Teacher of the Year with 16 years of experience, Rebecca Mielwocki understands the importance of student feedback. Mielwocki told HPR, “Every great teacher I know understands that it is our students who know us best and can best answer questions about how clear, knowledgeable, helpful, organized, creative, thoughtful, caring, and fair we are in our classrooms. It is a vital resource that is just now beginning to be tapped, and I couldn’t be happier about that.”
Hesitations and Limitations
Still, many educators are hesitant about the idea of implementing student surveys in the classroom. In addition to the reliability and viability of student feedback, some of their main concerns include whether the responses will be used to formally evaluate or fire teachers, the overall focus of the surveys, and their susceptibility to personal attacks on teachers.
Teachers are rightly concerned that data from the surveys can be misused to accuse or attack them. Not all comments from students are going to be helpful or constructive—personal attacks may discourage teachers from seeking input from their students and cause them to miss an opportunity to gain a new perspective and to grow. Despite her support for surveys, Mielwocki did have reservations. “If administrators use this information to do anything other than help coach and improve teachers, there will be problems with implementation,” she explained. “Historically, teacher evaluations have been used to batter teachers, to gloss over great teachers, or to give ineffective teachers a free pass to continue teaching without undergoing true and effective scrutiny with opportunities to grow, be coached, and improve.”
Mielwocki is not alone in her hesitation. Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, told HPR, “We have an uphill battle to bring student surveys back to their main purpose. Because of how they’ve been used in last several years, they have become radioactive.” To keep surveys on track and to avoid alienating teachers, districts must work collaboratively with teacher unions and ensure that the teachers’ concerns are addressed throughout the process.
Structuring Smarter Surveys
So how should districts run their surveys? Weingarten offered a suggestion: anonymize them. “I found them really helpful, especially when they were anonymous,” she said. “My students were very honest, and I found that I learned a lot from them.” Anonymizing student surveys not only allows students to be honest without fear of reprisal but also prevents teachers and principals from looking only at their favorite students’ responses.
In addition to implementing anonymous surveys, districts should focus surveys on observable behaviors. Dr. Rena Subotnik, director of the Center for Psychology in Schools and Education for the American Psychological Association, told the HPR that “instead of asking whether the teacher is effective, you can ask, ‘Did the teacher present the goals of the course or lesson? Did the lesson lead to learning the content and skills you needed to meet those goals? Was the teacher responsive to questions and queries?’…The data that emerge from such a survey can then provide a teacher with specific feedback on specific behaviors that she or he can improve.”
Further, according to an American Psychological Association report, “rating observable teaching behaviors requires less judgment on the part of the students completing the survey and thus is more likely to produce consistent results than are global questions that require students to make inferences about teacher performance.” By ensuring that the questions on the survey reflect observable teaching behaviors, students would be more likely to provide helpful and specific feedback on instructional quality.
To address concerns of personal attacks and misuse, districts may filter student surveys for inappropriate responses before releasing the data to teachers and principals. These results should not be used in formal teacher evaluation. Rather, principals could work with teachers by using the data to point out their strengths and weaknesses and then discuss ways to improve. Thus, by filtering out hurtful personal attacks, properly training principals, and excluding surveys from teacher evaluation, districts can ensure that there is a safe environment for growth.
Despite the support for the validity of student surveys, student surveys have limitations and should not be the only measure of the formal teacher evaluation. Even though students can provide beneficial feedback, they are not typically qualified to rate certain traits of effective teaching, such as classroom management, content knowledge, and curriculum design. Districts should still implement other forms of evaluation, such as teacher observation, as each form of feedback provides some unique insight. In fact, by using student surveys and classroom observations together, teachers can obtain a fuller picture of their strengths and weaknesses, as well as specific suggestions on how to improve.
The evidence and research in favor of student feedbacks are not going completely unnoticed as school districts across the nation, like the Glendale Unified School District in California, begin to implement student surveys as a means to improve teacher effectiveness. In an interview with the HPR, Dr. Richard Sheehan, Glendale’s superintendent, stated that “information is powerful…and constructive feedback is the best way to learn, especially from the students.” He plans on implementing filtered feedback from sixth grade onwards after further development and input from teachers, administrators, and the public. Sheehan understands the importance of both the students’ and the teachers’ perspective and plans to work collaboratively with them throughout the process. As for possible pushback from the teachers’ union, Sheehan is hopeful that “if we do it right, we will bring them along with us.”
Image credit: US Department of Education