Assume that a faculty member is told in no uncertain terms that student evaluation matter and that successful colleagues maintain a 4.0 out of a 5.0 scale. As learned individuals who observe and understand human behavior, certain reactions can be anticipated. Since the students’ happiness index tends to reflect both workload and grades received, a bias is inbred into the system to reduce the former and raise the latter. Hence, we observe less mastery of the common body of knowledge and the well-documented grade inflation over the years.

Beyond these two most sinister by-products of the performance measuring device are the more subtle, though all too prominent manipulation devices observed. A study of syllabi will see such practices as: your lowest grade will be dropped (note that you do not see reference to both the lowest and highest grade being dropped); if you have this average, no final exam; take-home examinations will be administered; no comprehensive final examination is given; and few formal hand-in assignments such as term papers are required. These practices have grown in frequency over time, reinforcing the notions that failure can be set aside, hurdles can be skipped, competency need not be demonstrated, and workload is minimal.

Currently, most professors design their own courses, write their own exams, grade those exams, and evaluate the students. Few will deny that one can "buy" high student evaluations by decreasing workload, writing many moderate-difficulty exams without any comprehensive final, spoon-feeding materials directed to those examinations, and evaluating students as largely A and B in performance level. Yet, none of these behavioral outcomes is consistent with an educational mission. The costs of any element of the academy pursuing such ill-conceived strategies because of excessive use of a poor performance measure are sizable. We believe they far exceed the claimed value of such tools. If teaching effectiveness is agreed to mean mastery, then assess the latter to evaluate the former. The result will be improvement in our institutions of higher learning. 

Society for A Return to Academic Standards

 Deconstructing an Evaluation Form