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A couple of loyal readers suggested I post some version of this news, “‘An Industry of Mediocrity’: Study Criticizes Teacher-Education Programs.” Here’s a quote from this Chronicle of Higher Education story:

Colleges of education are “an industry of mediocrity” that churns out unprepared teachers to work in the nation’s elementary and secondary schools, according to a highly anticipated report.

The report, “Teacher Prep Review,” describes the findings of a controversial effort to rate the quality of programs at 1,130 institutions nationwide that prepare about 99 percent of the nation’s traditionally trained teachers. Released on Tuesday, the report is the product of a partnership between the National Council on Teacher Quality and U.S. News & World Report.

I’m kind of dubious of rankings/evaluations from groups like U.S. News & World Report, and given the history of “teacher’s colleges” and “normal schools” in this country, it is no surprise to me that where we train our teachers are not typically “elite” schools. And the article and many of the comments point out that the methodology these folks employed to come up with their findings are dubious.

Anyway, read it if you want. I’m going to enjoy a lovely late spring/early summer day instead.

Making the rounds on the internets and the facebooks is this post/article from Psychology Today “Do the Best Professors Get the Worst Ratings?” by Nate Kornell, who is an assistant professor at Williams College.  It’s an interesting albeit not revolutionary/surprising piece that recounts a couple of clever studies about student evaluations.

The first is an experiment that took place in a laboratory setting where student subjects watched one of two videos of the same lecture. In the first version of the lecture, the teacher spoke fluently, “stood upright, maintained eye contact with the camera, and spoke fluidly without notes.” In the second video, the teacher wasn’t as fluent of a speaker, “stood behind the desk and leaned forward to read the information from notes. She did not maintain eye contact and she read haltingly.”The first version of the lecture was rated as “more effective” by the students—that is, the first version received a better evaluation—but “when it came time to take the test, the two groups did equally well,” which suggests that the charisma and performance of the teacher mattered a lot in the student evaluation but not necessarily in a measure of student success.

Kornell also talks about a much larger and more complex study that involved multiple sections of an introductory course at the Air Force Academy that all used the same syllabus and final exam. In that study, the less experienced instructors who (the study speculates) were doing more “teaching to the test” received higher evaluations than the more experienced instructors who were teaching a broader understanding of the material. However, students in the courses that were generally rated lower in student evaluations actually did better on the exam.  As Kornell writes:

Bottom line? Student evaluations are of questionable value.

Teachers spend a lot of effort and time on making sure their lectures are polished and clear. That’s probably a good thing, if it inspires students to pay attention, come to class, and stay motivated. But it’s also important to keep the goal–learning–in sight. In fact, some argue that students need to fail a lot more if they want to learn.

These results don’t surprise me one bit. I’ve had any number of students come up to me years after they had been in a course of mine– particularly a class like first year writing, which almost no one actually wants to take– who tell me that they figured out some time after the class that the stuff I was having people do was actually useful.  This is one of the very difficult problems of any kind of “assessment of learning” exercises, be it by students or by some kind of institution: it’s often hard to tell.