Two Professors Try to Redefine Professor Quality � The Quick and the Ed

Two Professors Try to Redefine Professor Quality � The Quick and the Ed

Two Professors Try to Redefine Professor Quality

by Forrest Hinton

Neither student course evaluations nor student results on curriculum-aligned standardized tests are good predictors of professor quality. In fact, even though students tend to give better reviews to instructors who have higher test scores, both of these performance evaluation tools are severely flawed. It turns out that professors with lower test scores and more negative student reviews are the ones adding the most value to college students’ educations.
If this seems completely illogical to you, you are well-suited for reading the rest of this post.
The conclusions above were reached by two professors—Scott E. Carrell of UC Davis and James E. West of the U.S. Air Force Academy—in a new research paper, “Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors,” featured in the June 2010 edition of the Journal of Political Economy. As the title suggests, 10,534 students who attended the U.S. Air Force Academy from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2007 were randomly assigned to required introductory courses. During their time at the USAFA, their academic performance in each course, as measured by standardized course exams, was tracked as they progressed through the curriculum.
To minimize any bias in this experiment, all instructors teaching core courses used common syllabi and all