Evaluations

The season is upon us when students evaluate their college and university professors. The evaluations promise to quantify for the institution the quality of the professors they've hired from the very people that will be graded by them. Unfortunately for said professors, it is at this juncture that this body of evaluating students will have a fairly good idea of what grade they will receive. No small reason for how an evaluation is ultimately written and scored.

It is a fraught relationship that the Prof engages on from the moment she steps in front of the classroom because if she is an adjunct, which she most likely is, these evaluations not only can determine whether she is re-hired, but also can determine whether she will be hired at all. Anywhere. And in retrospect it is easy to see all the compromises one has made so that this very moment at the end of the semester won't be brutal. Because being an adjunct is no minor affair. And the goal is to emerge from the endless cycle of freeway driving, massive loads of grading, minimal job security, and squeezing in job applications, with a full-time, tenure track position. So compromises are a reality. As is grade grubbing.

The rearview on a semester (or quarter) proves unpleasant, if not downright shameful. But there is a clear trajectory. So let's start with a slice of what goes down. Let's say an assignment for giving a speech requires a full-sentence outline that outlines what the speaker will talk about, and let's say that not only is this outline part of the written description of the assignment on the syllabus, it is also gone over in class lecture, is practiced in a workshop making up an entire class session, and is available as a sample on the class's online webpage. This seems like ample assistance on a full-sentence outline, and yet what is turned in, albeit by a minority of students, is an essay style paper, not an outline of any kind. Not a full-sentence outline, nor any kind of outline at all, just an essay, a category of paper that is explicitly cited in class as NOT the way to create an outline because, well, it is not an outline, it is an essay. How does this happen? Well, usually this handful of students proves to be a hardy sort that don't find class valuable on workshop days and will skip (unless you offer points for attending the workshop) and feel they work better on their own (I assume), or they don't use the resources on the class's webpage, or they don't attend lecture, or they don't open their book to look at the samples in their...you get the idea. And they tend to be repeat performers. You spot them early on, lurking in the back of the classroom when they show up, often trying to sneak onto their phones (I have a no technology rule in class unless we are using that technology), and typically leaving as soon as class is over. They are there by force, whatever that force is. And I am not unsympathetic, however minimal input logically results in minimal output. No hard feelings, nothing personal, not a big deal. They aren't into school, and not everybody is. But when their grades are finalized, those evaluative letters that stamp them as having succeeded, held on, or failed, this is where these hardy bunches come to life.

"Why is this a C?" (I was being generous, in reality it was really a D but I wanted to avoid this confrontation). "Did you read the feedback?" I ask. "No, I didn't see it.", or "Yeah, but I wanted you to explain it." or "Can I do extra credit to make up for this grade?", or "I didn't know I had to turn in an outline.", or "Can I email you an outline later today?" It is relentless. Some (many) teachers assign extra credit that will help dilute this problem. They offer extra easy assignments so that students can make up the points they missed in doing actual assignments, assignments that are part of tackling the material in the class. Extra credit points are student attitude buyouts. Some of these extra credit opportunities do so brazenly. I know of one English teacher who offers her students extra credit points for donating items to Goodwill. Donating clothes, not even writing about the donation experience, just donating the items. This way students who didn't put in the work can add points to their overall score and, in some cases, end up with an A that doesn't at all reflect what they have actually learned.

Then the evaluations. At the end of the year this same group of students has the opportunity to evaluate the professor. The very same professor who did, or did not, offer extra credit. The professor who didn't let them turn in assignments late. The professor who said no to cellphones in the classroom because studies have shown time and again their presence lowers learning. The same professor who didn't re-open the exam online they missed, an exam that was clearly on the syllabus schedule, announced in class, and open for over 24 hours. The disgruntled bunch makes their feelings known. The customer service was not to their satisfaction. Gratefully the rest of the class is responding to the evaluations as well, and all the smaller concessions made did help the overall relationship, but nonetheless compromises are made. No marking students down for being late, even if they are late by over 30 minutes, letting assignments be re-submitted if they are willing to put in the work, letting some glaring errors slide, using class time to do homework for the class itself, giving out points if 90% of the class completes the evaluations (so not just your unhappy students respond), and on and on. Some of these concessions taken singly are really not a big deal, but taken en masse they feel rather damning. It is as if one backs away from expectation, from radical transformation that can happen in a classroom, and from pushing students to dig deeper with concentrated attention. Because to do these things is to ask students to be uncomfortable, to engage with the work, and to demand that they see themselves as students not as consumers.

Evaluations serve a purpose. They are needed. They can provide a lens onto what a teacher can do to improve. Even more purposeful however are peer evaluations. When other instructors review other instructors this, done correctly, can be a way to provide mentorship and instill a sense of culture about pedagogical values and strategies. But as it stands now students evaluations are weaponized, and worse the students know it. And some use this power. I know of one lecturer who was accused of racism because he was lecturing on the historical significance of Black Lives Matter. There was a student who wasn't doing well in the class and he was upset about his grade, and he was upset that he had to learn about Black Lives Matter, part of the course's curriculum. This student was White, and the lecturer is White, but the evaluation doesn't identity, and the student knew that. So he used the evaluation to target the lecturer. When the institution received the evaluation that accused the lecturer of racism they assumed that the student who accused him of racism was a student of color, and he was never hired again. It is a permanent blemish on his record merely because in doing his duty in educating the students on the important social, cultural, and political movement of Black Lives Matter, not because of the quality of his instruction.

I have been lucky so far to have mostly good reviews so that the scattered less flattering reviews are not wreaking havoc. I say this only because I don't want this blog to be seen as a rant by an angry adjunct. The evaluation process is deeply flawed, and it is not getting any better. If the goal is to really evaluate instructors, there are better ways to accomplish this so that 1) instructors are truly evaluated, and 2) so that instructors feel they can truly teach without making the numerous compromises that many of know we make and talk about with each other over cheap, warm beers. Education is valuable. It is critical even, especially in a democracy. And there are many pieces to education, and not all of them, or even most of them, are in the college or university classroom, but some of the pieces are indeed there. Educators are supposed to get their students to push past their own horizons, to expand their consciousness, to find a more personalized drive, to work with one another, and to make the curriculum their own. These skills transfer into "real life" beyond the classroom. Citizens need to know how to do research, how to learn, and how to work with others. Evaluations are leaving the best educators, the most passionate, at unbelievable risk. Tenure is needed. One need look no further than the adjunct experience with evaluations to understand this.