High schools should add students to the teacher evaluation system.

Arguments: The Flaws With the Current SystemTest Scores: The National Center for Fair and Open Testing (NFT) (1) notes that many schools focus a little too much on tests scores for teacher evaluation in order to get grants from No Child Left Behind. So the school's real reasoning behind giving test scores too much worth when it comes to teacher evaluation is not actually the accuracy of such an evaluation, but the opportunity to obtain grants. Principle Reviews: This one is very obvious. Teachers can easily change up their regular way of teaching the moment a principle walks in. I see this all the time with teachers that I have had.Of course, both these factors should not go away but it is clear that something is missing. NFT explains, "To measure teacher and principal quality and effectiveness, use multiple measures based on school and classroom evidence." Accuracy of Student EvaluationsStudent evaluations are just what high schools need to correctly asses teachers’ abilities. The Atlantic cites a study performed on various teacher evaluations filled out by students. (2) These evaluations were proved to be much more accurate than any known way of assessing a instructor’s abilities. This study was able to show that teachers with high ratings were able to fit in six more months of learning than teachers with the lowest ratings. This shows that students don’t always give teachers high ratings because they like the easiness of the class. Improves the School SystemTeacher's Union Exposed notes that today, bad teachers are actually protected (3). Only 1 in 1,000 bad teachers are fired. This is because once teachers gain tenure, they basically cannot be fired. It takes about 3 years of mostly positive evaluations to achieve tenure in most cases. As I have proved above, the current evaluation system can protect bad teachers because test scores and administrator assessments alone cannot accurately measure a teacher's worth. By adding the accuracy student evaluations, the chance of bad teachers getting tenure become much lower. Student's First Organization (SFO) strongly believes that student evaluations are the key to putting students first which should be the ultimate goal in every school system. I'll get more into that later. Benefits the Student and TeacherStudents: Obviously, if the student is put first, the students will be satisfied. Nubia Baptestie enjoyed this system being integrated into this school system (2). "A classmate standing next to her shook her head. They should've done this since I was in the eighth grade." Ben Johnson, a teacher and administrator himself, conducted a study showing that there is an overwhelming gap between what students expect from their teachers and what they actually get. The average gap is 35% (4). No one can assess a teacher's abilities better than a student because they are being taught by the teacher daily. If students feel like teachers cannot meet their expectations, student evaluations of teachers will give them a way to make their voice heard. (not just to the administration but to the teacher)Teachers: With this point, I'm mainly talking about the teachers who strive to learn how to teach better. Above, I showed the large gap between students expectations of a teacher vs. what students receive. When students note what teachers do right/wrong, teachers can know how to improve their methods of teaching. ConclusionElaborating on Student's First Organization card: According to SFO, "If our evaluation systems put students first, this dissonance would be impossible. Good evaluations are honest and transparent, are calculated in an understandable manner, accurately asses overall performance, and identify opportunities for teachers to improve." Essentially, this can only be done with student evaluations. Benefitting the school by picking out the good teachers and making sure the school's priorities are right, benefitting the students by helping them feel like they have a say, and benefiting the teachers by letting them know how to improve is why these evaluations should be integrated into high schools (5). (1) http://www.fairtest.org...(2) http://www.theatlantic.com...(3) http://teachersunionexposed.com...(4) http://www.edutopia.org...(5) http://www.studentsfirst.org... Thank you to unknown_player for accepting. Good luck; i'm looking forward to a great debate!!