Student Evaluation Form Teacher: Fill & Download for Free

My students at the time thought it was a big mystery, but I and the other teachers all knew it was coming, we were just staying quiet about it out of respect.It was over Christmas break several years ago. The teacher in question was an older gentleman who should have retired before it got as bad as it did for him, but I think he needed a reason to wake up and feel useful every morning. He had no wife or kids and I think his job was all he had going for him.The previous summer, our old principal… the one who hired this teacher some 40 years earlier… retired and a new, younger, more energetic principal took their place. That new principal inherited the entire faculty for the next year… the contracts had already been signed.There was friction between the new principal and the older teacher immediately. At our summer meetings, the new principal introduced a new online teacher evaluation form that we had to complete every month. It was a little complicated and seemed pointless to all of us, but we were told to do it, so we did.Except the older teacher. He sat in the meetings and refused to touch the computer in front of him. He’d always had a strong anti-technology tendency in class.Over the next few months, the new principal made several other changes, most of which we all thought were positive changes, and all of which the old teacher refused to participate in. He just kept doing what he’d been doing for the previous 40 years.By November of that year, the decision had been made that he had to go. At his request, he was allowed to stay until Christmas break, so he could use the break to clean out his room and still have time for his replacement to move into the room. He also requested that no students be told he was leaving, and that this would be listed as a mid-year retirement for medical reasons, not that he was being fired.I ended up helping him move some of his stuff out of his room over Christmas break.When the students returned, they all asked about him. All the teachers would say was that “he retired.” The students thought it was odd that he’d do that in the middle of the school year.

There have been a range of studies of student ratings of teachers. Findings have included:Male teachers consistently get higher average ratings from students than female teachers, even when courses are administered identically (e.g. Study says students rate men more highly than women even when they're teaching identical courses)When the gender of teachers is hidden (text-only teaching), male and female teachers who have been randomly assigned male names consistently get higher ratings than teachers randomly assigned female names. (e.g. http://www.utstat.toronto.edu/reid/sta2201s/gender-teaching.pdf)Student ratings of teachers are not related to how much students learn (e.g. Meta-analysis of faculty's teaching effectiveness: Student evaluation of teaching ratings and student learning are not related) but they are related to the grades students get (i.e. students give teachers good ratings when they receive good grades, not when they have learned something).So no, it’s not a particularly good idea.

It depends entirely on the mechanism the institution uses. At Brown, as of a few years ago, we ask students to complete the evaluation forms before they can see their grades. I think it’s still optional but maybe with some kind of delay. As a result, completion rates are very high.