Editorial: Evaluations needed to make student voices heard

After suffering through hundreds of tests themselves, high
school students might finally be given the opportunity to turn the
tables. It’s about time.

Too many decisions about secondary education are made without
the input of the very students the system is intended to serve.
Calls for accountability and reform have, until now, ignored the
most important members of the high school scene.

Enter a Los Angeles assemblywoman and a plan to shake up the
status quo.

Jackie Goldberg, chairwoman of the state Assembly’s
education committee, has championed a plan written by a statewide
coalition of student councils to allow students to evaluate their
high school instructors.

If Goldberg’s bill passes, teachers could decide whether
to be evaluated; the responses would be confidential and the
teacher would be the only one privy to read them, according to the
Sacramento Bee.

This isn’t a scary prospect, contrary to what some
teachers are saying. Some fear the evaluations would eventually
become compulsory, or that the responses would have bearing on
their employment status. Others say they’re perfectly aware
of how well they’re performing, and the last thing they need
is a bunch of angry students sounding off against their style.

Because of these concerns, some of the state’s most
important education bodies haven’t even taken a position,
including the California School Boards Association. The head of the
California Federation of Teachers told the Bee she couldn’t
support it because “these things are fraught with
problems.”

No. It’s time students were given an opportunity to give
feedback on the teaching that they must endure, like it or not, for
six hours a day. This is an important step toward empowering
students in their own education, and toward giving them a sense
that their opinion deserves to be heard.

Inevitably, many students won’t care. They won’t
take the opportunity seriously. They’ll rate teachers poorly,
based on a personal vendetta, a bad grade or out of spite ““
regardless of whether they actually learned anything in the class.
Some instructors are afraid that the evaluations will take on the
quality of feedback found on anonymous Web sites.

But the best teachers know the difference. They can filter
through the nonsense to find true feedback, and a few four-letter
words won’t dissuade most educators. If they do, high school
has bigger problems.

High school should be the time students develop critical
capacities. Sadly, too many students are never invited to share
their perspective. In that regard, opening feedback channels
between students and teachers could be more valuable than any
lesson plan.

The current system is full of unidirectional feedback. This
proposed mandate would be a positive step in reversing that trend.
Certainly, many students will use the opportunity to be spiteful
and revengeful. But, giving students a conduit to voice their
criticisms is more important than protecting teachers’
egos.