Making Sense of Evaluations in Higher Education

The University of Northern Colorado, where I am privileged to work, along with countless other institutions of higher learning recently (within the last five years) transitioned from paper and pencil evaluations to web-based ones. The utilization of technology for course evaluations offers a multitude of benefits: significant reduction in the use of paper, easier to compile data and run reports, less intrusive to instructional time, and students can complete the evaluation on their time. However, there is one significant problem – students are not completing course evaluations, at least those attending the University of Northern Colorado.

The last 15 courses I have taught produced an average return rate of 19%. The highest return rate I received was 53% and the lowest was 0% (twice). I realize the importance of teaching related to an individual’s job status varies from institution to institution. However, at the University of Northern Colorado teaching is typically weighted at 60% of an employee’s contract and all professors are expected to excel in the classroom.

Assuming the trends observed at the University of Northern Colorado are indicative of return rate trends at other institutions, I await a wrongful termination lawsuit claiming a professor was dismissed for poor teaching when only 20% of the enrolled students completed evaluations. Clearly, there are a number of issues associated with such a low return rate:

•  To ensure the validity of the findings, researchers will either strive to document the views of the entire population or employ a proven sampling procedure to survey a portion of the population. The current practice at the University of Northern Colorado is failing to capture the voice of the entire population and is not employing any defensible sampling method. Instead, it is conceivable that only extreme viewpoints are represented in an evaluation (“He is the worst/best professor I have ever worked with”).
• Regardless of the professor’s overall rating, the evaluations lack validity due to low return rate. If I had a 10% return rate and all of the completed evaluations rated me as an outstanding professor I am unable to make any conclusions from this feedback. What did the other 90% think?

I could continue that list of issues associated with a low return rate, but I prefer focus on the legal questions. Can a university legally defend a position that a professor is ineffective in the classroom if that conclusion is based solely upon student evaluations and the return rate is below 50%? What if an assistant professor is denied tenure and promotion by her colleagues due a lack of evidence of solid teaching when a vast majority of the evaluations are not being completed by students? I look forward to hearing what other institutions are doing to increase evaluation return rates and I will be interested to see the outcome of this eventually unavoidable lawsuit.

The Case of the Unwelcome T-shirts (14 t-shirts, that is)

As students head back to school this year school administrators are once again embroiled school dress code fiascos. From shorts that are way too short to pierced lips, today’s administrators are never far away from the latest fashion trend. It stands to reason that the most reasonable fashion choice for any student is the good ol' t-shirt. Today’s public school students rely often rely on t-shirts as a staple of a modern, yet comfortable wardrobe choice.

A case handed down this past spring by the 4^th Circuit US Court of Appeals could certainly be filed away in your First Amendment playbook as a typical dress code incident where reasonable school policies prevailed over an unreasonably dressed teenager, but a closer look at this case reveals just how time consuming even the simplest wardrobe infraction can become.

Candice Hardwick should indeed go down in the books as a student who was not only willing to challenge a school dress code policy, but one, who along with her parents, was relentless in doing so for four complete academic years. Hardwick, a middle school and high school student during the incidents that spawned the litigation, wore not one or two troublesome t-shirts, but ended up with a stockpile of at least fourteen controversial t-shirts. Most of the t-shirts bore the Confederate flag in some form and pursuant to past dress code judicial rulings favorable to school administrators in school districts where racial discord maintains a presence, these t-shirts were unacceptable for this public school setting. A portion of the shirts were protest shirts focused on the school administration. The dress code itself was standard fare for most schools and attempts by the parents to convince the school board to revise the dress code policy were unsuccessful.

Hardwick’s parents were insistent that the shirts displayed a pride in family heritage, yet school officials were able to cite recent racial tensions and incidents that clearly illustrated the need for additional improvement. The Court held the Tinker standard allowed school officials to forbid any shirt they could reasonably forecast would cause a disruption. Again, for legal scholars a case that, once seen in in its totality, seems like a First Amendment slam-dunk.

The lesson here is more than your first-year Constitutional law one. It illustrates the persistence of some students and their families to challenge school policies. Had the school administrators in this case not understood the concept of forecasting a “reasonable or materials disruption,” the case could have ended much differently. Instead of losing patience and sound judgment, the administrators wisely and consistently relied on the fact that any of the shirts worn by Hardwick would disrupt the educational process. The case is a glaring example of the types of stress even the most minor legal issues can place on school administrators. Imagine dealing with this student and her family over ten times, only to have her show up at school the next day with a new shirt bearing a new message, some critical of you and your job. In addition, imagine the impact that being the 't-shirt cop' can have on your overall relationship with school culture. Without much detail, it is safe to assume this one dress code situtation demanded a great deal of administrative time and attention - repetitively. Such discussions are necessary to encouarge democracy and maintain school order, but I speculate, can also become tiresome for the school leader.  The lesson here is short: the t-shirt, society’s comfy, reliable staple, can also be the principal’s worst nightmare.

Common Core (Predictably) Falling Apart

Politico reports today that Georgia has become the fifth state to withdraw from the Common Core standards project after fully understanding the additional expenses involved in administering the new standardized tests, as well as realizing the enlargment of the federal role in education that will come along with adoption of the Common Core.  Considering that other states are already considering opting out (including Florida, home of former Governor Jeb Bush, a big Common Core supporter), and counting the four states that chose at the beginning not to be part of the Common Core (which included Texas, the great driver of textbook content for the nation), the list is approaching death-spiral territory. 

I predicted this a while ago.  Essentially, the Common Core is "NCLB-light."  Great taste: The standards, from what I can tell, are consistent with the better state standards that exist.  The tests, also from what I can tell, seek to go beyond the overly formulaic and reductionist forms of testing that exist in most states today.  Less filling: But none of this matters.  Why?  Because teaching a more rigorous curriculum is harder, and therefore more expensive.  And testing in more authentic ways is more labor-intensive, both on the test-administration side and on the test-scoring side, and therefore much more expensive.  At present, standards development and test development are funded, but not test administation, scoring, and reporting, let alone teacher training.  And most importantly, no existing state education funding rides on the decision whether to adopt the Common Core or not. 

Putting aside its many, many flaws for a moment, NCLB's main successes (and it was successful in causing many school districts to finally start paying at least some attention to disadvantaged and minority students' test scores) came from the fact that it was enacted mostly as an amendment to Title I, meaning that the failure to adhere to NCLB would (at least theoretically) put at risk federal Title I funding, which is very substantial.  Many states hated NCLB (really, most states hated it), but they went along with it because there were consequences for noncompliance--the potential loss of lots of funding.  Not so with the Common Core, which is supported only by a (relatively small) set of grants, most of which have gone to the testing/textbook companies and their agents which have developed the standards and tests.  It is very easy to see why states are now beginning to say "No thanks."  This is a new set of more rigorous demands on instruction and assessment, decoupled from any real consequences for the states themselves for noncompliance.  I'm actually amazed that more states have not opted out yet. 

Standardization of curriculum and assessment (whether at the state or federal level) requires a coercive mandate.  In federal education legislation, that means coming up with a big enough pile of money to induce the states to act in the way desired in exchange for the money.  Congress is broken today, so I don't see that happening.  Common Core was probably the best that could have been done in this environment, and having a set of well-developed standards at least gives the states something they can adopt, adapt, and draw from, but I doubt it will go much farther than that when the other costs become apparent.