Online, there's a place to review and rate anything these days--restaurants, hotels, cars--you name it.
And that's usually a good thing for consumers who want to get the most for their money. But sometimes it can go both ways--someone with an ax to grind can really wreak havoc on an online forum.
Like, for example, one where you can rate your professor, or teacher.
One high school student in Larkspur, was bothered enough to write an editorial in the student newspaper, The Bark, on one such online rating website, RateMyTeacher.com. Calling it 'online assault', Redwood High's Trevor Oeschel writes-
"When looking at some of the reviews of teachers I came upon one review that just said, "I hate her with a passion." Why should this one single, obviously biased review follow him or her for the rest of their career? It's obviously unreliable."
RateMyTeacher allows you to search for any high school and see how the teachers stack up through a fairly primitive rating system that allows you to score for easiness, helpfulness and clarity on a scale of 1 (being the worst) to 5 (being the best).
Looking at the Redwood High list, it appears that nearly all the teachers are listed on the site and you can see their average 'score' without creating an account. To see the comments, some of which Oeschel particularly objects to, you just click on the teacher's name. Here's a sample--
"She was terrible,horrible, i hated her. Completely inconsiderate. Overly sarcastic, accusing and unfair"
"grr......i really dislike her. awful teaching, does not clarify lessons, unrealistic in expectations. evil. unpredictable, mean-spirited, grating."
"ya she will like you if you are on the track team"
There are positive comments as well, but those could be just as unreliable-- an easy teacher who doesn't expect much from their student might get raves.
According to Oeschel, 'honesty is always the best policy' but he claims it can't be found on sites like this.
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