What if students’ voices played a role in teacher evaluation and development?  According to Tracy Crow in “The View from the Seats” (Learning Forward, JSD Dec. 2011), teachers in Memphis City Schools are about to find out.

Through their partnership with the Measures of Effective Teaching Project, Memphis teachers will receive student feedback on their level of care for their students, their classroom control, their ability to clarify difficult ideas, their desire to challenge their students, their capability to captivate, their wish for students to confer, and their skills of consolidating the day’s learning.  Data gathered from almost 3,000 classrooms suggests teachers who receive high ratings on this survey have classes that score at high percentiles.  As a result of this correlation, administrators might use survey results to plan teacher development and write evaluations.

Should student voices contribute to crafting teacher development and evaluations?