This paper is widely reported as saying that student evaluations anti-correlate with performance in later classes. I haven’t read the paper, but I think that might be oversimplify the claim.
You might expect this result, if popular teachers are easy and don’t push the students, but that’s definitely not what’s happening in this military academy with a uniform curriculum. But if what’s popularly perceived as the dominant force in (american) evaluations has been eliminated, it’s not clear whether this tells us much (about other american schools).
A casual glance at the abstract leads me to read the paper’s conclusion more as “Teachers who have easy classes and teach to the test provide worse foundations and get better evaluations.” This seems like a pretty likely hypothesis that would explain some of the correlation. Some evidence could be gathered for it from ratemyprofs.
I’ll read it further when I have time to check for things like linear regression.
ETA: that study looks really good. I am curious with how the data would be effected if students consciously rated easiness separately.
This paper is widely reported as saying that student evaluations anti-correlate with performance in later classes. I haven’t read the paper, but I think that might be oversimplify the claim.
You might expect this result, if popular teachers are easy and don’t push the students, but that’s definitely not what’s happening in this military academy with a uniform curriculum. But if what’s popularly perceived as the dominant force in (american) evaluations has been eliminated, it’s not clear whether this tells us much (about other american schools).
A casual glance at the abstract leads me to read the paper’s conclusion more as “Teachers who have easy classes and teach to the test provide worse foundations and get better evaluations.” This seems like a pretty likely hypothesis that would explain some of the correlation. Some evidence could be gathered for it from ratemyprofs.
I’ll read it further when I have time to check for things like linear regression.
ETA: that study looks really good. I am curious with how the data would be effected if students consciously rated easiness separately.