TEACHERS EARN AN F IN FREEDOM

Some Albany-area school districts are upset about a California website known as RateMyTeachers.com, according to a lead front-page story in the Albany Times Union. Sadly, the New York State United Teachers union was prepared to bring legal action against the site, but appeared to recognize a free speech issue when it looker closer. That recognition, however, apparently did not stop them from recommending that schools who don’t like it simply block student access to the website.

On Web, kids hand out the grades: Students rate and offer comments about their teachers, but some schools ban access to the site

By RICK KARLIN, Staff writer

August 18, 2003

In a Web-fueled turning of the tables, students can now grade their teachers. Gossiping about teachers has always been a favorite schoolyard pastime. Everyone has a teacher he or she clearly remembers ¾ the nerdy math teacher, cool music instructor or macho gym coach. Such thoughts used to be scrawled on bathroom walls or scribbled in yearbooks. Now, the remarks are on an Internet site that lets students rate and post comments about their teachers.

It dates to 2001, but the best indication that RateMyTeachers.com has really caught on is that a handful of local schools, including Guilderland and Queensbury, have banned it from computers on their campuses.

Described as “The Voice of Middle, Junior High, and High School students,” the Web site (www.ratemyteachers.com) allows students to rate their teachers on helpfulness, clarity of instruction ¾ and since this is for students ¾ “easiness.” Even though the site is based in California, students in New York, including in the Capital Region, are some of its most avid users.

Most of the comments are positive, such as the review given to Albany High School science teacher Leslie Hatfield, who is described as “hilarious,” and someone “who made earth science fun when I thought it was boring,” or Averill Park math teacher Denise Smith who is “very tough,” but “is always there to help, morning, day and night.”

A smattering are negative, such as the Shenendehowa teacher who “just shows up for a paycheck,” according to one remark. A few are simply amusing, such as the comment about a Troy teacher’s 1970s-style comb-over hairstyle.

Despite the lighthearted tone and cartoonish icons that denote a good or bad review, the site is based on a serious idea: giving students a voice in who is teaching them, said Tim Davis, the Bakersfield, Calif., special-education teacher who helped start the site.

“It’s the first time I really feel that students have a voice in their education,” Davis said.

News of the site has spread nationwide by word of mouth and a handful of news accounts but not by advertising, Davis said. As of Sunday, 355,209 teachers had been rated in 20,361 schools across the country.

The handful of schools that have blocked the sites from their own campus computers offer a variety of reasons, said Davis, who added that his own school district has done so as well. In some instances, school officials grow weary of hearing from parents who also monitor the site to make sure their kids are getting the highest-rated teachers.

“Parents are checking it out and they are giving these high schools fits,” he said.

There also have been complaints from teachers who note that the postings are anonymous. Negative comments could come from rival teachers, and some teachers have said they’d like to rebut poor ratings. According to a June newsletter from the United Federation of Teachers, the New York City teachers union, the Web site “has caused consternation among middle and high school teachers in the United States and Canada.”

It went on to note, “Every week, some unhappy teacher threatens to sue the site’s owners.”

In fact, the newsletter noted, a lawyer from the New York State United Teachers, the statewide affiliate, looked into possible legal action and found that since the site isn’t based at the schools and comprises opinions, it falls under constitutional free-speech protection. The article did suggest that teachers who are unhappy with the site can ask their computer officials to block it from school computers.

Guilderland officials couldn’t be reached for comment on their decision to block the site, but William Furdon, principal at Queensbury High School, said the site was blocked because his district has only one Internet server and doesn’t want kids in the elementary schools to be playing with the site.

Furdon noted that most comments are positive. According to Davis, about two-thirds of the postings overall are favorable.

The site uses volunteer students as administrators to edit the postings for guidelines against vulgarity, name-calling or other bad-taste remarks.

RateMyTeachers.com “is a realistic site that challenges you to examine the teachers at your school,” said Dan Shepard, who administers it for Schenectady High School.

It lets students “add in your two cents to tell of how you think of the teacher,” he said.

The Times Union ran the following editorial on August 21, 2003:

Now, class ... And you, too, teachers; no point in trying to squelch what kids say about their instructors

When will they ever learn?

We’re talking, of course, about teachers and school administrators. With just a few days before classes resume, they’d best come to grips with the fact that they leave quite an impression on the kids they teach. Often it’s favorable, but sometimes it’s not.

Kids share those impressions, of course, as they have for generations. Talk in lunch lines, on school buses, in playgrounds, over the telephone and seemingly anywhere kids congregate frequently will be about which teachers are the most demanding, which ones are the most helpful and which ones are the least popular. Some of it will be substantive, and some it will be childish or even mean-spirited.

It’s hardly a surprise that in 2003, students from middle school through high school can evaluate their teachers through numerical ratings on the Internet. A Web site called RateMyTeachers.com (www.ratemyteachers.com) has posted ratings on more than 350,000 teachers in more than 20,000 schools nationwide. The vast majority are positive, though the ratings themselves would flunk any test for statistical validity.

Nor should it be much of a surprise that some teachers don’t like it. No doubt it can be jarring to be the subject of something posted on the Web. Something scrawled on a wall at least has an immeasurably smaller audience.

Still, the best advice for teachers and school administrators would seem to be to get used to it. Or to get over it. But by all means, don’t try to block kids’ access to RateMyTeachers.com. That will only make the site more popular.

William Furdon, principal at Queensbury High School, says the site is off-limits on the one Internet server in his school district because he doesn’t want elementary school students having access to it. Mr. Furdon’s would seem to be a futile cause, given other access kids have to the Internet.

Other Capital Region schools with similar bans include Guilderland High School, Farnsworth Middle School in Guilderland and Troy High School.

If anything, schools might encourage the site’s use. RateMyTeachers.com stands out, more than anything, for its generally constructive use of the Internet. The rules and protocol there promote a decorum and civility that’s far ahead of many other Web sites.

Surely the comments posted on RateMyTeachers.com tend to be much more refreshing than what the United Federation of Teachers, the New York City teachers union, has to say about it. A recent issue of the union newsletter sounded far from acquiescent to its observation that what was posted on the site was, after all, constitutionally protected speech. Now there’s a lesson for kids, all right.

UFT instead suggests more of the sure-to-backfire tactic of asking school officials to block RateMyTeachers.com school computers.

Anyone who would do so, of course, deserves special mention on that very site.

All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2003, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.

THIS EDITOR’S NOTE: I have to note something I have noted many times before and that is the consistent and eloquent viewpoint of the Albany Times Union when it comes to freedom of speech issues!

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