Within this essay I will show what happens when students are allowed to grade their teachers. This is the cause, and as you will see, my essay is made up of the effects created by that single cause.
Students grade higher with hopes they will get better grades
There are some students that are going to assume that if they give a better grade for their teacher they will fall into favor with the teacher. They assume they will get a better grade themselves and this will lead to negative consequences. It may lead to student disappointment, or even worse, may lead to students actually getting better grades as a result of their teacher grading; which is unfair.
Student grading cannot be impartial
The grading of a student is supposed to be done based on academic achievement in a fairly impartial way, but there is no way a student can impartially evaluate a teacher, which for the most part is going to mean the teacher grading is unfair.
Teaching becomes a popularity contest
This is probably the most common effect of teacher grading. In Britain, they have people that wish to be University lecturers give talks to High School (comprehensive) high achieving students. The lecturers have to be graded by the students and the lecturers are nothing short of sickening. They give out sweets to people, ask (if not beg) for a good review, and some have worn very short leather mini-skirts to try to gain favor with the boys. Ironically, they have done this with the high achieving boys when these are the same boys that think a “tit” stands for Titan in World of Warcraft.
Teachers bully students into giving better grades
This is not unheard of during times when teachers are being reviewed, and it would be far worse if students had to grade teachers. Threats of harder work, more tests, lower grades and outright hostility may be used to bully students into giving teachers a higher grade.
Students take out personal vendettas with grading
There are lots of ways a student can do this. They can simply give a bad review, but they may also bully other students to give a bad review. It also gives a student the chance to start rumors and lies that may cause the teacher a lot of problems in his or her career and life.
Students that graded poorly are treated worse
A teacher would be inclined to be nice to the people that graded him or her well and be horrible to those that graded poorly. As a result, a student may be afraid to give a negative review. Even if the reviews were anonymous it would not work, as the teacher good forge a bunch of anonymous reviews and the teacher would still recognize handwriting and so be able to single out students.
Teachers pander to students in hopes of a better grade
This is similar to what the aforementioned wannabe lecturers were doing. It may also mean a teacher directs a lesson based on the mood of the class, or may become apologetic or overly forgiving in order to gain favor with the students.
Higher grading of teachers becomes unpopular
There is also a chance that grading a teacher highly becomes as unpopular as kissing up to a teacher. It may become “uncool” to grade teachers highly, and many students would follow the trend of poorly rating teachers because they want to fit in and maintain their bad boy/girl reputation. At the very least, they may give negative reviews in order to fall in with the crowd and not stand out.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are numerous effects that would come about due to the cause of teacher grading by students. As you can see, most of the effects would be negative which leads me to conclude that the effects of teacher grading are not worth the benefit of any positive effects, ergo, I think that teacher grading by students is a bad idea.
