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Seriously????  After 25 years of teaching, my professional future will dpend on the evaluations of 13 year olds?  The same ones who can’t remember to bring a pen to school every day and forget their books in class?
I think there is a hot dog vendor on the corner outside my school.  Maybe we should survey him as to how I perform.  How about we ask the custodial staff to jump in here, too?  Let’s not forget the mailman, UPS delivery guy, the water delivery guy, and the guy who brings the new mop heads every week.
Ironically, the staff at Tweed accepts no one’s evaluation of their peformance.
The NYC DOE has truly become a sad little circus of self indulgence and ludicrousness.
As for the critics who will chime in about me being too high and mighty to be eveluated, the fact is there are very few people left in the non teaching staff of the NYC DOE who are actually capable of comprehending and eveluating what I do on a daily basis.  I feel very secure saying there are very few of them who could DO what I do much less evaluate it.

Seriously????  After 25 years of teaching, my professional future will dpend on the evaluations of 13 year olds?  The same ones who can’t remember to bring a pen to school every day and forget their books in class?
I think there is a hot dog vendor on the corner outside my school.  Maybe we should survey him as to how I perform.  How about we ask the custodial staff to jump in here, too?  Let’s not forget the mailman, UPS delivery guy, the water delivery guy, and the guy who brings the new mop heads every week.
Ironically, the staff at Tweed accepts no one’s evaluation of their peformance.
The NYC DOE has truly become a sad little circus of self indulgence and ludicrousness.
As for the critics who will chime in about me being too high and mighty to be eveluated, the fact is there are very few people left in the non teaching staff of the NYC DOE who are actually capable of comprehending and eveluating what I do on a daily basis.  I feel very secure saying there are very few of them who could DO what I do much less evaluate it.

My anecdotal observation of students’ candid comments about teachers indicates that they often are remarkably accurate about some things. Ineffective teachers frequently are hostile to kids, oblivious to their concerns, or really are just plain ineffective. But there is still a significant danger to all teachers in using student evaluations nonetheless. Cliques of students and their friends could easily manipulate evaluations as a retaliation for some fantasized abuse or perhaps just because a teacher is pushing too much “rigor”.they don’t like, etc. Since a well established principle of justice calls for protecting the innocent sometimes at the expense of letting the guilty go free, student evaluations is a poor idea and should be firmly rejected.  

Tim, I’m sure your experiences with your  K- 8 sample are valid but as you to your credit admit you can’t “know them all” when it comes to students. Higher achievers have no trouble engaging in conspiracies to to achieve their goals- just ask Stuy. Given the ludicrously low bar of college readiness metrics at least 71% of high school seniors should be judged at risk -that is not ready for further education.Many ,many students believe that school is an absurd exercise and will treat the survey accordingly. My take.

Some general observations:
A. A teacher has the power to evaluate a student and, unlike one student evaluation, their one evaluation of a student has incredible power.  It is, at the very least, unfair not to give students some of the same power. 
B. Only students are there every day, can see what goes on every day, and not just when the teachers are putting on a show for parents or admins.
C. Teachers often bully students with little to no recourse for the students.  Therefore, I am unsympathetic to the conspiracy argument.
D. The best teachers I had in high school all had their own very extensive and totally anonymous evaluation forms that they had all students fill out, telling us not to hold any punches.

I would value the teacher who values the opinions of his 13 year old students.

Tim, thanks for a thoughtful reply. I could be wrong about the timeline, but wasn’t Blackstone a contemporary of that famous Massachusetts case with the hysterical adolescents as character witnesses for the prosecution?  But even today, this is no idle occurrence, as incidents of cyber bullying attest, sometimes with tragic results. Individually kids are often very mature, but peer culture can radically alter that and often rather quickly.

Also, to say that tenured teacher is “just losing a job” is a serious understatement of the facts. Losing a job as a public school teacher also takes away your state teaching license, so you are denied public teaching jobs anywhere in the state as well as reciprocal right neighbor states – no small matter. Not exactly equivalent to disbarment, but pretty close. And this is aside from the disgrace to one’s reputation which I think Franklin had a quote or two about.

And yes, Blackstone was probably referring severe penalty situations. But more to the point, this was already early legal reasoning that eventually became expressed as modern human rights law. So unless you are some sort of constitutional fundamentalist, we are all better off individually and as a society with this expanded concept of rights and protections.

Finally, concerning the “innocent child born into poverty”, I think you could eliminate all 2-4% most ineffective teachers tomorrow and its not going to alter educational outcomes that much if at all. The attention it receives is certainly out of proportion to the possible effects it will have. Real educational reform is somewhere else (pre-K, class sizes, etc). Funny how that kind of “news”never ends up in the NY Post or Daily News. I wonder why. Maybe look at where Klein is now, or Moscowitz, or the recent Daily News editorial
about what happens next after the “heralded” Newark teachers contract fails to
change education. Just follow the money
as Deep Throat would say.

And oh yea. I do use student feedback in my classes already. It really is very helpful. what works or doesn’t, likes-dislikes, and suggestions. And that’s exactly where I intend that feedback to stay. .

No one has a larger stake in a teacher’s effectiveness than students, and their voices should be heard. As the teacher quoted in the article notes, administrators conducting classroom observations witness only a tiny snapshot of a teacher’s performance, which may or may not be representative of that teacher’s practice over the course of an entire school year. Students, however, are with the teacher in the classroom every day, and have knowledge and insights that no one else does. For example, only a student can tell you if a teacher really made the material “click,” inspired them to become passionate about a subject, or provided the support that made the difference between staying in school or dropping out. Surveys will give teachers and principals a fuller picture of the learning experiences of their students and will let teachers know what’s working well in the classroom and what isn’t.
 
Well-designed, research-based student surveys are not popularity contests. Rather, they ask students for feedback on specific, concrete elements of a teacher’s practice. Surveys are also designed to ascertain an overall pattern of response from all of a teacher’s students. When used for evaluation purposes, they should be administered multiple times over multiple years.  A handful of angry students with a grudge against a particular teacher will not be able to throw off the results. Further, research on the Tripod student survey has shown that there is very little difference between how an A student and a D student rate the same teacher. Students will not penalize teachers who give them a bad grade. 
 
A number of urban districts, including Chicago, Boston, and Denver, have committed to including student feedback as one of multiple measures in teacher evaluation, and NYC should join them. Advocates for Children of New York released a report earlier this year making the case for student and parent input in teacher evaluation, describing efforts other states and districts are making to incorporate such input into their own systems, and providing recommendations to the DOE, available at http://www.advocatesforchildren.org/sites/default/files/library/essential_voices_june2012.pdf.

Yes, because students have never made false accusations against teachers for trivial reasons.
It must be nice to live in a dream world where children are perfect little innocent angels.
Sadly, most teachers live in a world where students and parents are dangerous weapons that can be aimed randomly and for no good reason. 
Children are called children because they are not adults.  They lack the experience, maturity, and emotional stability that comes later in life.  Their efforts should be concentrated on learning and absorbing knowledge, not expressing their ill-informed opinions about the complex activities of the adults around them.
School is a training ground for life, not an arena for self indulgence of the young.  If we reminded children a little more often that they have much to learn, instead of putting them in adult roles, they would be better developed as adults.
Children don’t need advocates, they need parents, teachers, and role models.  Then, when they have developed as well balanced adults, they too can get involved in the adult activities of life.
Any teacher or administrator that needs a child to tell them what is going on in the classroom is a poor example of an educator.
Perhaps President Obama can recruit some of these insightful youngsters everyone refers to as advisors on economic matters, foreign affairs, and military affairs.  After all, their unique perspective should not be hoarded by schools.

WELL SAID MY FRIEND WELL SAID