High schools should add students to the teacher evaluation system.

Before I begin, I made a minor mistake with my websites when. I sourced them in R2. I accidentally made it to where it simply took you to the home page. If you wish to see the exact page I looked at, here they are for R2: (1) http://njmonthly.com... (2) chrome://external-file/Adolescents'%20Expectations%20of%20Teachers.pdf -this one is being tricky for some reason. Put this in chrome or try this: I'm not sure why, but I can't get to it from safari http://www.cedu.niu.edu...'%20Expectations%20of%20Teachers.pdf (3) http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org... (4) http://www2.ed.gov...(5) http://www.ed.gov...(6) http://files.eric.ed.gov...Now attacking my opponents case: "The Flaws With the Current System" -Essentially, I will also be building up my point, the current system is the most effective way to evaluate teachers, while I attack my opponents arguments on this topic so that I don't have to repeat myself later. 1) The first issue was the test scores. My opponent tried to prove that test scores have little worth when evaluating a teacher. She argued that they only give the tests for grants. While this is true, they play a major role in evaluating a teacher. The standardized tests show how much a student has learned. My opponent mistook my statement she quoted by thinking that I meant it doesn't involve the teacher. The tests completely rely on what the student has learned from the teacher. The teacher controls what he or she teaches and how well he or she teaches it, but the teacher cannot have actual physical control over the actual score. It is accurate because it shows what the teacher has been able to teach in the school. 2) The second issue is principal reviews. Here is a piece of evidence that sums up my point. "More recent research suggests that principal evaluations are most accurate at the top and bottom ends of the teacher performance range. Observations of teachers" classroom performance and standardized test scores measure different dimensions of teacher performance." Principal reviews can pick up anything that the standardized test scores leave out. This fills the gaps, thus making the system strong. There is argument over a teacher changing teaching once a principal walks in, but this is only part of principal reviews. A majority of it is based in teacher leadership meetings, seeing student achievement, seeing the depth of information by end-of-the-year tests (finals), other administrator reviews, and even student assessments (2). This keeps the sight for error broad so that nothing is missed while keeping it professional and using qualified personnel. This proves that the current system is in no need of extra variables that would cause inaccuracy in the future. "Accuracy of Student Evaluations." -I will build up my complete opposite point, A system with students added would not be accurate, in the process of attacking this point. 1) My opponents evidence form The Atlantic that shows that teachers with high ratings could fit 6 more months of learning than those with lower ratings is irrelevant. The school could have easily known this by the various methods I listed above in principal evaluations. For example, by seeing the finals, the administration could have easily come to this conclusion because the depth of information on it would significantly lower for the teachers with lower ratings. Having students evaluate the teachers in this situation was completely unnecessary......(about the students getting it right?).... 2) Addressing biases, there is no way to prove they don't exist because they do. This affects the rating................................ My opponent states that the two pieces of evidence make students qualified when in reality, it would only prove that they aren't not qualified. Just because they won't lie or call a teacher bad because of grades doesn't mean they are qualified to know the standards by which the teacher is held at the school. Therefore, they are not qualified by this argument even IF it were correct. Improves the School System -For this one, I will simply attack it. 1) Teachers that gain tenure get it because the tenure system is flawed itself and not a direct cause of the teacher evaluation system. It has become "a system that favors seniority and ignores merit sends a terrible signal to anyone thinking about teaching" (3). To prevent this, schools need to pay more attention to student achievement (3). Schools aren't giving tenure because of good teachers necessarily. 2)Saying "bad teachers" is a loose term that can be taken on many levels. There are no direct and specific qualifications for the word "bad." The evidence does not say anything about whether these so called "bad teachers" were new, experienced, well-educated themselves in their subject, etc. If it was proved that this large amount of teachers that weren't fired were inefficient and couldn't do their job, then I'd like to hear the argument. 2) The current system puts students first without giving them power that is not theirs. The whole basis of teacher evaluations is to make better students and provide a better education. Here is an analogy. Restaurants always put their customers first. This doesn't mean they get to decide what a good price is for the quality of food. The owners get to decide that and they will fail as a restaurant if they have badly priced food or just terrible quality food. If reasonable, serious people were able to decide as customers what the price of the food should be, it would inevitably be lower than its true quality and price. The customers know nothing of the restaurant world so they aren't qualified to do this. It is the same with students. They don't know enough about the standards of a teacher to put a "price" on their teaching. For all we know, they could have a brand new teacher that's working really hard but just hasn't figured it out yet. It is the responsibility of the owner, or administration, to set the standards and hold the chefs, or teachers, to that standard. Benefits the Student and Teacher. -This simply goes back to my two arguments: Students have many different ranges of what they expect in a teacher, and It is inevitable that students will expect something that the teacher will not meet.. I will support these two while attacking my opponent's argument. 1) It won't benefit the student. Satisfying the students isn't the primary focus of a school. It is unimportant. The gap that opponent speaks of is inevitable. Students don't 100% expect the same kind of teacher in his or her style of speaking teaching, control of the class, personality, or methods of teaching. There will always be a gap. Not reaching the expectations of the students isn't always a bad thing. For lack of specifics, we must rule in the great possibility that the expectations were only not met by slight differences and not necessarily completely drastic being the opposite of expectations. It is possible that the expectations were merely approached which isn't all of the sudden wrong. This also goes to my point of student expectations that cannot possibly be met. This must be considered also. 2) it won't benefit the teachers spoke of in this point. Students at any point in time can walk up to teacher and talk to them about this issue of teachers wanting to become better. If they truly do, I'm sure they won't mind that a student gives feedback. Some teachers might even ask on their own. Student evaluations would simply turn feedback from students talking to writing. It's easy either way, it does neither harm nor good. Thus, it is unnecessary. >>>>>To make things clear, I will show exactly how I defended my arguments and defend the ones I have not addressed in the attack on my opponents case: Students have many different ranges of what they expect in a teacher. *see attack 1 on "Benefits the students and teachers"* My opponent attacked my argument by bringing up the format of the evaluation and trying to show that it would make it more accurate. In the study, the evidence I provided, it was a survey of what they wanted in a hypothetical teacher. They had different preferences. This would obviously reflect on the evaluation. I know for a fact at my school, some teachers are despised by students while others find them amazing. There is too much of a contrast to give an accurate evaluation. There need to be qualifications for students to have the right standard to evaluate the teachers. *see attack 2 on "Flaws with the current system" and attack 2 on "Improves the school system"* It is inevitable that the students will expect something the teacher will not meet. *see attack 1 on "Benefits the students and teachers." The current system is the most effective way to evaluate teachers. *see attack 1 and 2 on "Flaws with the current system." and basically everything else* For the many arguments above, students should NOT be added to the teacher evaluation system. Sources: (1) http://www.cecr.ed.gov... (2) http://www.newrepublic.com... (3) http://www.education.com...