How do YOU rate?...

Found this over on the Education Wonks

An anonymous teacher rating site: http://www.ratemyteachers.com/

This is NOT a new concept!

Way back in the age of LSD, hippys, flower-power, Vietnam protests, there existed the same resource at the university I attended. It was a resource called: “The Tower List”. It was an underground student published pamphlet of professor rating scores and student comments about the professors on campus.

It was, understandably, the most popular book on campus. It was also the most hated publication, by low rated professors, on campus.

As a direct result of the “The List”, the classes of the “A/B” rated professors were fully enrolled while the classes of the “sub-C” list professors were noticeably under enrolled.

The “sub-C” group decried the document as unfair, a popularity contest and threatened libel. They wanted “The List” banned from the campus. This posed an interesting dilemma for an institute championing the “free expression of ideas and information”.

This “situation” lasted for a few years until the university simply solved the “problem” by removing the names of which professors were teaching which courses in the class catalogs and then assigned professors to classes AFTER class lists were enrolled.

Fortunately, there isn’t a similar “www.ratemysubstituteteacher.com” site for me to worry about, but I DO sometimes wonder, though, where I might rank.