Rating teachers on Web

Rating teachers on Web
Teachers have always been able to grade pupils. Now there's a Web site that turns the tables on that traditional relationship.
RateMyTeachers.com (http://www.ratemyteachers.com) allows middle school and high school pupils from across the United States and Canada to grade the performance of their instructors. According to the site, more than 420,000 teachers from 24,000 schools have been critiqued, and the numbers show no sign of stopping.
Pupils rank teachers on a scale of 1 to 5 in three areas: easiness (class workload), helpfulness (approachability, demeanor) and clarity (ability to convey subject matter clearly). The helpfulness and clarity scores are averaged to generate an overall quality rating.
Posting comments to the site doesn't require membership, and neither names nor e-mail addresses will be found with the remarks; it's completely anonymous.
Is RateMyTeachers.com helpful? It depends. If you have a choice of teachers when you register for classes, then you may find the comments useful. And certainly, it's always fun to read what other pupils think of your instructors and measure their opinions against your own.
On the other hand, since the postings are anonymous, you have to take them with a grain of salt. You never know what could be influencing the writer's remarks. Also, the criteria the site uses to grade teachers aren't specific enough to give you a full view of an instructor's capabilities. For example, if a teacher ranks low on the easiness scale, their class still may be enjoyable.
XEric Goodwin writes Hotlink for Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. You can send e-mail to egoodwin@krtinfo.com.