The Year-Later Evaluation
By Dean Dad June 14, 2010 9:42 pm
Several alert readers sent me
this piece from the Washington Post. It glosses a study conducted at the Air Force Academy that finds that
Professors rated highly by their students tended to yield better results for students in their own classes, but the same students did worse in subsequent classes. The implication: highly rated professors actually taught students less, on average, than less popular profs. Meanwhile, professors with higher academic rank, teaching experience and educational experience -- what you might call "input measures" for performance -- showed the reverse trend. Their students tended to do worse in that professor's course, but better in subsequent courses. Presumably, they were learning more.
The piece goes on to suggest that student evaluations are not to be trusted, because they reward entertainment, attractiveness, and/or easy grading. Instead, administrators should shuck their slavish dependence on shallow popularity measures and defer to faculty rank.
The argument collapses upon close examination, of course. If student evaluations had the implied effect, then these tougher and more effective teachers would never have had the opportunity to gain more experience, let alone get promoted to higher rank. The stronger performance of the senior group actually suggests that administrators are doing a pretty good job of separating the wheat from the chaff at promotion time (and of taking student evaluations with the requisite grains of salt). But never mind that.
Mothering at Mid-Career: Summer Jobs
By Libby Gruner June 14, 2010 9:28 pm
The summer after my junior year of high school I got a summer job in a resort town in Maine. It wasn’t my first summer job — I’d worked previously as a day camp counselor and a babysitter — but it was my first summer job away from home. The job wasn’t glamorous: I worked four hours a day cleaning a restaurant. My brother got me the job; he was doing outside work at the same resort, and when their regular cleaner hurt her ankle he mentioned that he had a sister sitting at home with no job. A few days later I was on my way.
Four hours a day didn’t keep me very busy, but I soon picked up another job as well, scooping ice cream. I happened into that job serendipitously, too: one hot day I was riding my bike around town and stopped into a hardware store to cool off in the air conditioning. The owner came by to see what I was up to, and when I confessed that I had just come in out of the heat he said I should buy something. “I would if I could afford to,” I said. It then came out that his
