By Craig Haratz ’14, Staff Writer

As the end of the school year fast approaches, children and teachers are “counting down” to the last day of school. By May, many students are looking forward to Newark Academy’s New June term and a summer free of lessons and tests. In the final weeks of fall term, students are asked to evaluate their teachers and respective courses. Student evaluations here at Newark Academy add a valuable component to the range of input for the evaluation of our teachers. Although some may question the validity of such ratings, under certain conditions, when the student puts time, effort, and a nonbiased attitude into the evaluation, the results can and should be useful.

Oftentimes, student rating forms ask many questions about matters that students do not appear to be in any position to judge reliably. For example the common question, “On a scale of 1-5, how organized is your teacher?” This is quite difficult to answer since students really can not see the time and effort that goes into planning a lesson. Although we sometimes catch a glimpse of a teacher’s organizational skills when we see his or her color-coordinated folders, one for each of their classes, as a whole, organization is a practically useless category for students to assess. After all, students themselves are still trying to learn strategies on how to effectively organize.

In addition, the fact that the overall evaluation process by students is sometimes the student’s evaluation of the teacher’s personality, instead of learning gains that they have had over the course of the term. For example, many forms used to evaluate teachers ask questions that may influence the respondent by mentioning extraneous and potentially prejudicial material, such as questions about the teacher’s personality or the appeal of the subject matter. Common examples of this kind of mistake include forms that ask for, comparisons with other teachers, whether the student would recommend the course to a friend, or, whether ‘it’s one of the best courses’ one has had.

While I do not doubt the overall effectiveness of the teacher evaluation process, a process that is more than fair for both the teacher and the student, the evaluation forms could use a bit of editing.