Should students be allowed to grade their teachers? (Argumentative Essay Sample)

Should students be allowed to grade their teachers?

Improving education quality demands the efforts of academic administrators, teachers and the students. The type of education that students get at various institutions points to a country’s feature failures or success, both economically and socially. The students, therefore, must receive a quality education and take it upon themselves as their duty and right. Since the introduction of academic guidelines, various measures have been made to improve the type of education in schools. The main argument that has recently come up is whether students should be allowed to grade their teachers to boost the quality of teaching in schools. This is viewed as a way of improving both learning environment and teaching environment. In this article, the gains and minuses of this method are looked illustrated.

If students are allowed to grade their teachers, the efforts and performance of each teacher will indeed be known. The school administration will have tips of what the students think about the teaching environment and their teachers and improvements made where necessary. With this kind of evaluation, student’s satisfaction can be judged. The satisfaction will help the well-performing teachers to continue improving their good work and in areas where students are not satisfied teachers will focus on changing their mode of delivery in class. From students evaluating teachers, the teachers will surely know how their mode and teaching environment is taken by students. By this teachers can judge whether their teaching methodology is a success or not. Therefore use of students to evaluate teachers will improve teaching environment in schools.

Grading of teachers has long depended on students grades; this has partially misled the administrators, as they tend to think that the grades are a true reflection of teacher’s delivery in class. Most students feel inferior to tell the problems they have with their teachers to either the administration or their parents. This inferiority complex lowers their performance and morale at school. Having a system that will give such students a platform to address their woes at school will undoubtedly improve their learning conditions and performance. Hence, improvement in education quality will be achieved in learning institutions.

Even though this method can be a success in improving education quality, the question whether the students are qualified, regarding their age and experience, to grade their teachers lingers. The students depending on their age can give wrong judgment and hence incorrect evaluation of teachers depending on what subject/unit/course the teacher is teaching. Lazy students can also give bad reports depending on the amount of homework the teacher gives. Also, students have an instinctive dislike to some teachers basing their argument on parameters like appearance, attitude, temper, etc. of their teachers. These considerations if used by the students the entire academic setup of an institution might never have a true picture of teacher’s performance in class. This kind of evaluation changes teacher’s attitude towards their profession and the students. Instead of focusing on improve the quality of education teachers will start focusing on ways of improving their (teachers) grades. This will lower quality of education as teachers will try doing what the students want and not what can improve the school system. Moreover, students might misuse this power and look at teachers as their subjects.

This method of grading teachers can work well and give good results if grading parameters are thought out and implemented in a right way by the administrators. Since education quality is a collective effort; evaluation should be handled by all stakeholders in education systems, to realize the quality.

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