Staff Editorial
Student feedback on teachers is an integral aspect of improving teaching quality and classroom environments, and EA should not only collect it more often, but must resume collecting it in the first place. Through initiatives such as the Center for Teaching and Learning, D’Ambrosio Fellowship and other professional development programs, EA clearly demonstrated its commitment to bettering the quality of its teachers. However, as an institution, it is neglecting the voice of the consumers of this professional development: the students.
Jeffrey Rubel, a new science teacher this year, who frequently sends out his own surveys to his students asking for feedback, explains his belief that students are the consumers of his teaching and most important providers of feedback, saying, “A department chair or academic dean can come in to watch me for 45 minutes, but in an ideal world, I could be putting on a very excellent show when they walk in the room, but the students see it all. They see the ups and the downs and they are also [experiencing] things like workload. They are living the day in and day out. They can give me a degree of insight that somebody who just pops in for a few minutes doesn’t necessarily see and feel.”
Up through the 2017-2018 school year, faculty collected student feedback through a now eliminated system called Folio. Mike Letts, Head of Upper School, says, “I thought [the students] handled it [Folio] very very responsibly. I very rarely ran across a student who was too complimentary or too inappropriate.” However, in the 2018-2019 school year, teachers were not required to collect feedback using Folio and, surprisingly, few did. In 2019-2020, the school formed a committee to research a replacement for Folio. Chris Anderson, Academic Dean, acknowledges, ”It has been several years since division heads required faculty members to obtain student feedback.” A quick sampling of Scholium seniors revealed that they had been asked for feedback in less than 40% of their Upper School classes prior to this year.
When asked why the administration opted to get rid of Folio, Letts stated, “The Folio system is very expensive and very cumbersome from an administrative standpoint so I think it was a lot of technical and cost issues around Folio, which is why we moved to our own independent teacher evaluation system. How we incorporate student feedback was on our list to be thinking about last year, and then everything went crazy and we just haven’t had a chance to get back to it.” Matthew Davis, computer science teacher and head of the committee to replace Folio, added, “We were looking for a better way to give meaningful feedback to faculty. It just wasn’t always the best information to help us improve.” Anderson added, “We feel we can do a better job on our own by developing, testing, and fine tuning our own instrument.”
The administration’s decision to replace Folio may have had its reasons. However, the fact that replacing it meant that EA went through a year of optional feedback and a year and a half (and counting) with no feedback system is problematic. Though a year may be short term from an administrative standpoint, it is a fourth of a student’s high school career, and an entire year of missed feedback for their teachers. Students need a comfortable channel to provide such feedback.
Although, according to Davis, the committee’s new feedback tool has been ready since April, the administration has not yet implemented it, citing both the two-phase creation of a new teacher evaluation system and COVID-19 as reasons for the delay. Anderson states, “Phase two of the process involves the development of a tool for student evaluation of faculty as well as the formation of a plan for faculty growth. Both of these components were in development last year when the pandemic hit, and everything came to a halt in order for all of us to refocus our attention on how best to address the needs of our students during a period of remote learning.” Scholium hopes that Anderson will reflect on the fact that for many Upper School students, over half of their school careers will be over before they can give feedback on teachers.
Though she is not yet able to share many details, Anderson explained that “we do have an instrument developed that we would like to put to use this year. [Department] chairs will meet next week to discuss this in greater detail.”
While Scholium is not aware of those details, the staff believes that implementing a one-time end-of-year feedback system would be disappointing. Going forward, EA should ask for feedback at the end of the first semester, rather than solely in April (and mid-way through single semester courses). This will allow teachers to hear what is going well and improve on what’s not in the moment, rather than after those students have left the class. Teachers give students interim comments twice per year to help students improve. Students should be allowed to offer their teachers that same courtesy. As Rubel says, “If you don’t have somebody telling you what you are doing right or doing wrong, you’re never going to change. You’re just going to assume that you’re doing everything right.”
Head of School T.J. Locke says, “I think it’s very important to get student feedback.” Although COVID-19 related delays are understandable, if Locke truly believes this, he should prioritize implementing a new student feedback tool after two years without one. Otherwise, Scholium has no choice but to give the school an “F” for feedback.