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In Canada at least you can rate your teacher to see who is performing and who isn't.

http://ca.ratemyteachers.com/

http://www.edweek.org/media/2006/06/16/dcfinal_1s. jpg

Don't credit the midwest too much - the majority of the population in the US is along the east and west coast. Having said that, also keep in mind that the US grade school education system SUCKS.

http://www.ratemyteachers.com/

I live in Georgia:

http://www.edweek.org/media/2006/06/19/41s-pipelin e-c2s.jpg

The fact that I'm having a child in this state scares the hell out of me.

My point is, using a computer, earning enough to have discretionary spending money and finding any value in a java enabled mobile phone versus a new car requires some degree of intelligence. This is an uphill battle for most people in the US, who are regarded as "resources" by anyone with an MBA and as the unwashed masses by anyone doing very well.

The story mentions a specific principal's profile. The principal was characterized as being "rude, condescending, pompous and arrogant" and "Who could allow someone like her to run a school? ... [she] is a terrible principal. She is a bully who does not care about the students or the school's wellbeing, but rather how they appear to the outside world."

Judge for yourself what you think of the comments in whole. Her name is Roslynne Moxham: You can view her profile here: http://au.ratemyteachers.com/schools/new_south_wal es/sydney/fort_street_high_school/roslynne__moxham

IANAL but it strikes me that no responsible adult takes a child's tales about his teachers at face value. So a teacher's reputation is immune to damage from the facial content of children's posting and children are therefore incapable of defamation.

For example, an adult reading a child's comments on their English teacher is likely to attend to the spelling and grammar of the child's post to the exclusion of the content, and judge the English teacher on his pupils facility with the English language. The child's comment is a raw fact from which the adult draws inferences but from which he does not receive instruction. "Excellent. Marking might seem harsh, but it's generally the standard for a VCAA assessment." The child views the teacher's job as helping him prepare for examinations. On this page we learn that children tend to make criticisms using little anecdotes.

In order to be defamatory Rate My Teachers would have to draw adult inferences from the children's comments itself. Another way in which it could be defamatory would be for adults to post fake comments contrived to induce other adults to draw adverse inferences about the teacher concerned. I don't see this second concern as realistic, but think about the logic of the point: you cannot hope to damage a teacher's reputation merely by posing as a child and posting childish derogatory comments. It encapsulates why I believe children are incapable of defamation.

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(FORMAT NIL "~16,32,'0r" (+ (* X Y) Z) :BASE 16))

Rating Rules By using this site you agree to rate and comment ONLY on teachers, administrators (principals, vice principals), counselors or other school professionals who affect a student's education. Do not include secretaries, lunch ladies, janitors or security people. They will not be accepted. You may rate each teacher (or other professional) only once.

Keep your comments appropriate. Do not state something as a fact if it is your opinion. For example, stating "Mrs. Jones doesn't have a college degree" will be deleted. Please rate your teachers based on your opinion of their TEACHING ability. Please try to provide us with an insight into what is happening in the classroom.
[...]
Teachers: We have created a system that enables you to register a special teacher account (for free!) and post responses to ratings your students left for you. To get started, head over to the join page.

It's understandable that having one's work criticized isn't nice. Then again, the ability to listen to feedback, consider whether it's valid, and take steps to improve if necessary is the foundation of professional development. Of course, some people can never be pleased, so some of the feedback will always end up ignored: therefore the validity consideration. In my work, whatever I'm doing, I usually prefer to hear what others think of my work. It's up to me to decide whether I care about it or not. If I start getting negative comments, I will address them, not suppress them.

Of course, a site like that can invoke some harsh criticism, and it does take quite a strong person to receive it. Not everybody may be up to it. But is suppressing it the right response? Wouldn't it be more constructive to start a discussion of the prevailing compulsive need to reduce such a multidimensional thing as a human being to a single number that can be compared and ranked? A discussion about what that tells about the modern idea of humanity?

I guess that wouldn't make sellable headlines, though...

Rating Rules By using this site you agree to rate and comment ONLY on teachers, administrators (principals, vice principals), counselors or other school professionals who affect a student's education. Do not include secretaries, lunch ladies, janitors or security people. They will not be accepted. You may rate each teacher (or other professional) only once.

Keep your comments appropriate. Do not state something as a fact if it is your opinion. For example, stating "Mrs. Jones doesn't have a college degree" will be deleted. Please rate your teachers based on your opinion of their TEACHING ability. Please try to provide us with an insight into what is happening in the classroom.
[...]
Teachers: We have created a system that enables you to register a special teacher account (for free!) and post responses to ratings your students left for you. To get started, head over to the join page.

It's understandable that having one's work criticized isn't nice. Then again, the ability to listen to feedback, consider whether it's valid, and take steps to improve if necessary is the foundation of professional development. Of course, some people can never be pleased, so some of the feedback will always end up ignored: therefore the validity consideration. In my work, whatever I'm doing, I usually prefer to hear what others think of my work. It's up to me to decide whether I care about it or not. If I start getting negative comments, I will address them, not suppress them.

Of course, a site like that can invoke some harsh criticism, and it does take quite a strong person to receive it. Not everybody may be up to it. But is suppressing it the right response? Wouldn't it be more constructive to start a discussion of the prevailing compulsive need to reduce such a multidimensional thing as a human being to a single number that can be compared and ranked? A discussion about what that tells about the modern idea of humanity?

I guess that wouldn't make sellable headlines, though...

True that. At both the community college and the private university I have attended, they made a small deal out of the feedback sheets we filled out. Whether or not they read them and tried to fix their weak spots I don't know for sure, and didn't really matter, the point is I don't really remember them even having teacher feedback sheets at public high school or earlier. Some of them seriously needed it like Mrs. Tarrant, my AP CS teacher who I doubt would understand the HTML I'm writing this in, and Mr. Kidwell, the orchestra teacher who had a hearing aid in each ear.

I'm wondering, where are the parents on this? Where are the politicians and school boards on this? Lets face it, highlighting awesome teachers probably wasn't the driving factor for this site, it was to warn students of bad teachers. Doesn't that rile up anyone? Students in public schools are being taught so incompetently, and the administration is so deaf to them, that they feel the only recourse is to post about it anonymously? Shouldn't that outrage people? Wouldn't a good school district do something like host their own version of this, and proudly post the results? Won't somebody PLEASE think of the CHILDREN?

True that. At both the community college and the private university I have attended, they made a small deal out of the feedback sheets we filled out. Whether or not they read them and tried to fix their weak spots I don't know for sure, and didn't really matter, the point is I don't really remember them even having teacher feedback sheets at public high school or earlier. Some of them seriously needed it like Mrs. Tarrant, my AP CS teacher who I doubt would understand the HTML I'm writing this in, and Mr. Kidwell, the orchestra teacher who had a hearing aid in each ear.

I'm wondering, where are the parents on this? Where are the politicians and school boards on this? Lets face it, highlighting awesome teachers probably wasn't the driving factor for this site, it was to warn students of bad teachers. Doesn't that rile up anyone? Students in public schools are being taught so incompetently, and the administration is so deaf to them, that they feel the only recourse is to post about it anonymously? Shouldn't that outrage people? Wouldn't a good school district do something like host their own version of this, and proudly post the results? Won't somebody PLEASE think of the CHILDREN?

Dammit, I wish I'd thought of this when I first got into web design in high school. I was too busy messing around with animated gifs and hunting for Xara 3D keygens.

Whilst trolling is inevitable, a quick look around shows that some (presumably deserving) teachers are getting positive reviews, and that the site isn't just being used for slander and ridicule. I'm going to give students enough benifit of the doubt that they have the discrimination to weed out fud and recognise useful praise and criticism on the site.

If I had known what an utter tool the art teacher at North Sydney Boys' High (Mr. Starling, 1998) was in advance, I never would have set foot in the place. This is a perfect example of what the Web should be for - access to information that empowers users (and in this case, I'll grudgingly admit, their parents) to make the best choices for their growth and development during a crucial period of their lives.

God forbid a student has an opinion and wants to express it.

http://www.ratemyteachers.com/schools/ohio/unionto wn/lake_high_school

You may as well add Frank Forchione as a teacher of prosecution; and rate him

There is a different website, called Rate My Teachers that has a MASSIVE system of moderation in place so comments like the ones from this story never see the public. Before you say it's impossible to moderate all of that - the top moderator on that site has reviewed over 60000 comments. That's just the top one out 3662 moderators.

There's a similar web site called RateMyTeachers.com that lets you rate high school teachers (its sister site, RateMyProfessors.com, offers the same service for college profs). I've been teaching high school for 5 1/2 years now, and after my sister emailed me a link to the ratings site, I immediately told my students that hang out in my classroom during lunch to go to the site and say the meanest, most ridiculous things about me possible. Why? Simply to prove the point that if students who like me can say awful, untrue things about me and have them published on the internet, then it's impossible to take those reviews any more seriously than a slashdot poll.

Now, as a professional educator, I value feedback and constructive criticism (it's a fundamental basis of education, so if it's good enough for our students, then why not the teachers?), but like any feedback, it needs to be accompanied with sufficient explanation and some degree of trust. Unfortunately, there's no incentive for anyone to be constructive or even honest on sites that allow anonymous ratings. Sure, you might be able to get an overall view of how students liked or disliked a teacher or professor, but giving them a numerical rating from 1.0 to 5.0 is as useful as basing a person's abilities solely on their SAT, ACT or IQ test score.

If a student really wants to have an effect on a teacher, they should go and talk to them about the problems they were having or make some friendly suggestions. Is this going to work on every teacher? Absolutely not - teachers can be some of the most egotistical and defensive people, and there are some you simply can't reach. (You should see teachers react to having other teachers come into their classroom for peer review - you can almost see their skin crawl.) However, I've found some of the negative comments I received about my teaching, especially early on when I was student teaching, which was such a bad experience that I considered not going into teaching at all, and from students who try but are still struggling, are some of the most helpful when I try to improve my teaching abilities.

However, I simply don't think online, anonymous reviews do anyone any good any more than high-stakes testing helps schools or students improve. The only way to improve a professor or teacher is to try to approach them about their shortcomings, and if that doesn't work (which really wouldn't be surprising), then switch classes and take someone you can enjoy, or suffer through it and hope the class goes quickly.

Here in Jersey, we use RateMyTeachers.com . Halfway through the last semester, a teacher of mine actually told us to rate him on there. Its anonymous, so he could find out what people really thought about him and adjust accordingly.

Nobody did it. I think that says something about how much people respect him.

Here's one[ratemyteachers.com]

And moderators: I posted this first... before you mod down for redundant, check the times of posting.

For more teacher reviewing fun y'all can check out this site. They check all posts and students can become moderators too. It even has a sister site for canada I belive.

Rate My Teachers has an entry for Richland Middle School and you can now rate or comment on Beverly Sweeney or the principal.

Rate My Teachers has an entry for Richland Middle School and you can now rate or comment on Beverly Sweeney or the principal.

Rate My Teachers has an entry for Richland Middle School and you can now rate or comment on Beverly Sweeney or the principal.

The primary problem I see with education is that it is nearly impossible to evaluate teachers. If good teachers (and there are a lot of them) could be supported and not interfered with by others, it would be great. But this isn't the case. The good teachers out there are more than offset by ignorant policies, moronic teachers, incompetant administrators, and yuppie families.