I think there’s a critical distinction to draw here. There are three possibilities that are being conflated in your comment.
Student evaluations correlate more strongly with test performance, and only weakly with deep understanding. (“Student evaluation of teacher performance is correlated to how well they perform on the immediate test more than it is correlated to how well they developed a deep understanding of the material.”)
Student evaluations correlate with test performance, and are not correlated with deep understanding. (“student evaluations reward professors who increase achievement in the contemporaneous course being taught, not those who increase deep learning.”)
Student evaluations correlate with test performance, and are inversely correlated with deep understanding—i.e. giving student evaluations coincides with more shallow understanding.(“In this way, student evaluation of a teacher can be inversely correlated to the quality of the education they receive.”)
Only if (3) is true does correlation suggest that student evaluations may be harmful to learning.
If (2) is true, student evaluations seem less attractive, but maybe restructuring them would be an experiment worth trying.
If (1) is true, then there’s a stronger case for student evaluations and seeing if we can get a better correlation with learning out of them.
I think there’s a critical distinction to draw here. There are three possibilities that are being conflated in your comment.
Student evaluations correlate more strongly with test performance, and only weakly with deep understanding. (“Student evaluation of teacher performance is correlated to how well they perform on the immediate test more than it is correlated to how well they developed a deep understanding of the material.”)
Student evaluations correlate with test performance, and are not correlated with deep understanding. (“student evaluations reward professors who increase achievement in the contemporaneous course being taught, not those who increase deep learning.”)
Student evaluations correlate with test performance, and are inversely correlated with deep understanding—i.e. giving student evaluations coincides with more shallow understanding. (“In this way, student evaluation of a teacher can be inversely correlated to the quality of the education they receive.”)
Only if (3) is true does correlation suggest that student evaluations may be harmful to learning.
If (2) is true, student evaluations seem less attractive, but maybe restructuring them would be an experiment worth trying.
If (1) is true, then there’s a stronger case for student evaluations and seeing if we can get a better correlation with learning out of them.