A Conceptual and Analytic Critique of Student Ratings of Teachers in the USA with Implications for Teacher Effectiveness and Student Learning

There is a large literature that suggests (numerical) student ratings of teachers (SRTs) are valid measures of teacher effectiveness. Nonetheless, there are many educators and researchers who continue to insist that SRTs are fatally flawed tools for assessing teacher effectiveness. Thus, supporters and critics of SRTs continue to gather validity-invalidity evidence to support their claims, yet neither provides a common conceptual framework by which evidence can be evaluated. In this paper, I use the principles of validation as a conceptual framework for critiquing validity-invalidity evidence and arguments. The utility of SRTs, as well as implications for teacher effectiveness and student learning, are explored.