Not long ago, students' opinions of their teachers were
whispered in hallways, scratched onto bathroom walls or
scribbled inside yearbook covers. But as the new school year
revs up, thousands of students are exchanging critiques of
educators on a national, very public Internet site.
Although some unhappy school administrators across the
country are blocking access to RateMyTeachers.com from campus
computers, cascading news of the site has made it hotter than
a Britney-Madonna lip lock.
"I think this sort of site was inevitable given the nature
of technology and student use of the Internet," said Bruce S.
Cooper, a Fordham University professor of education who
recently explored RateMyTeachers.com in an article for
Education Week.
If
school administrators don't want to share their assessments of
teachers, students can be expected to set up their own system
to exchange information, Mr. Cooper said.
The idea of rating teachers has clearly touched a nerve: As
of this week, students had submitted more than 2.2 million
anonymous assessments, mainly for secondary institutions.
After opening with little fanfare and no advertising in
2001, RateMyTeachers.com is receiving about 6,000 student
ratings each day. Comments have been cataloged on more than
360,000 teachers working in 20,000 public and private middle,
junior and high schools in the United States and Canada.
"It has grown this big by word of mouth," said one the Web
site's founders, former Dallas resident Nancy Davis, a
Bakersfield, Calif., junior college professor.
Mrs. Davis said the Web site is attempting to make money by
selling advertising but thus far hasn't turned a profit. Cost
of the server and Web space has been largely borne by the
professor, her husband and two partners, she said.
The ratings and comments are moderated by more than 1,600
volunteer students who weed out nasty, offensive and
unconstructive criticism.
"A lot of them are things like, 'They're stupid' or 'This
person shouldn't be teaching,' " says Loraine Bottorff, a
17-year-old senior who watches over submissions for Denton
High School.
Adds
Ann Fritsche, the 15-year-old volunteer "admin" for Ursuline
Academy in Dallas: "Our girls are pretty good about saying
what they really mean. There are just some teachers that don't
teach as well as they could. Other teachers you just love to
death."
Students are given the option of rating their teachers by
categories, including "easiness," helpfulness and clarity. The
total score is indicated by smiley faces – a graphic that
appears next to the teacher's name indicating popular, good,
average or poor.
A comments box allows students to elaborate, and that's
where some ad hominem attacks leak through: "Does not know
about deodorant" and "Onion-breath" or "Has fish head."
But most comments are positive. Mrs. Davis estimates that
60 percent of student reviews could be considered favorable.
"If there's something inappropriate, we will delete it,"
she said. "If a teacher writes in and points out something
really horrific that is not true – 'She eats dogs for dinner'
– you know, we'll take that off. But if it's simply that they
don't want to be rated and they object to being listed, we
reply that it is not our policy to remove teacher ratings, and
we don't."
Showing an interest
For Mrs. Davis and her husband, Tim, a 52-year-old
special education teacher, the rising tide of student
participation in the Web site is a logical extension of the
Internet's ability to coalesce opinions valuable to consumers.
"It shows us that students absolutely have an interest in
what's happening to them," said Mrs. Davis, who retired as a
Mobil Oil financial analyst in Dallas and now teaches
accounting in Bakersfield.
Mr. Cooper, chairman of the educational leadership division
at Fordham University in New York, agrees in principle but has
problems with the Web site's setup.
"Part of me really believes that full information is better
than no information and that schools do a poor job of rating
their teachers and letting the students know," Mr. Cooper
said. "I mean, if you go buy a car, you've got J.D. Power and
their ratings. When you buy a teacher, you just don't have
anything."
Mr. Cooper said the forum should allow a dialogue between
teachers and students.
"Some teachers were depressed about what was said about
them," he said. "Others said they would never look at the site
again. But some were positively elated about how positive the
students were when talking about them.
"I just think there ought to be some middle ground. There
ought to be some respect for the rights of the teacher."
In North Texas, a handful of schools have ratings posted.
Most target a few teachers.
In one sense, Mr. Cooper's desire for interaction between
students and teachers is already taking place inside
RateMyTeachers.com. E-mail sent to site administrators from
students and teachers is regularly posted in a section called
"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."
Students and teachers also grapple in discussion forums.
One teacher wrote about the pain that the ratings have
caused.
"On multiple occasions, I walked into our teacher workroom
to find teachers crying over their ratings from this site,"
the teacher wrote. "It is so frustrating to us to see a
horrible rating, yet not know exactly what isn't working with
the classes. It would be like failing a course without getting
any feedback along the way."
Hiding behind the cloak of anonymity, say the offended
teachers, allows bad students to take out their frustrations
on well-meaning, solid professionals. That's just not fair,
they argue.
"If you really want to teach young people, then you should
REQUIRE that these comments not be posted anonymously," wrote
one teacher. "Such anonymity is the bastion of cowards. SHAME
ON YOU!"
Mr. Cooper said the Web's ability to gather opinions made
it inevitable that a teacher-centric Consumer Reports
would emerge.
Some of the most freewheeling sites have folded under
criticism and threats of libel suits. They include
SchoolScandals.com, a prime destination for gossip about 100
public and private Southern California schools.
When the Web site drifted into nasty language and details
of sexual liaisons – all naming names – the site went dark
April 25.
Filtered messages
PTA Web sites for some middle, junior and high schools
sometimes offer vibrant discussion areas covering teacher
performance and student complaints. But most messages are
passed and filtered through parents. Direct contact with
student opinion is almost nonexistent.
Unified action against RateMyTeachers.com has been
sporadic. A New York City teachers union newsletter recently
noted that the Web site "has caused consternation among middle
and high school teachers in the United States and Canada."
"Every week, some unhappy teacher threatens to sue the
site's owners," the newsletter said. It went on to advise
offended teachers to request that school computer officials
block RateMyTeachers.com from student Internet access.
Many school officials have done just that. In fact, they
include those at Bakersfield High School in the Davis family's
adopted hometown. The Web site's "Wall of Shame" lists about
400 schools that have blocked student access to
RateMyTeachers.com.
Regarding the anonymity of posters, Mrs. Davis said
students aren't the big problem. Surprisingly, the Web site's
database analyses show that teachers sometimes attempt to
masquerade as students. The intention is usually to denigrate
fellow teachers and raise their own rankings, she said.
"Teachers blasting each other is a much bigger problem for
us," Mrs. Davis said. "We get notes from teachers saying,
'Hey, these ratings aren't coming from students; they're
coming from another teacher, and I know who's doing it.'
"We run a regular database cleanup program that seeks out
multiple entries from a single Internet address so that no one
can stuff the ballot box."
Some teachers have even attempted to sabotage the system by
volunteering as student admins.
"We can see the patterns in postings," Mrs. Davis said.
Double-edged
From Mr. Cooper's perspective, RateMyTeachers.com is
double-edged.
"Though it runs the danger of hurting teachers and
teaching, it also holds the promise of enhancing education
through public exposure of strengths and weaknesses," he
concluded with co-author Kathleen P. King in the Education
Week article.
But to students such as Ursuline's Ms. Fritsche,
RateMyTeachers.com is a valuable, long-overdue tool for
getting a better education.
"One time, some freshman just randomly called my house to
ask about a teacher," Ms. Fritsche says. "I was thinking, 'You
know what? ... There has to be a better way.' "
E-mail dbedell@dallasnews.com
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