RateMyTeachers

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**RateMyTeachers**

RateMyTeachers' School Page Screenshot
URL	http://www.ratemyteachers.com
Type of site	Review
Registration	yes
Owner	founder Michael Hussey
Created by

RateMyTeachers, also called RMT, is a controversial review site used to rate elementary (primary) school and secondary school teachers' performance (and popularity). Participants give numerical ratings on a scale of 1 to 5 in three different categories to their current or former elementary and secondary school teachers. Visitors can also leave an optional brief comment based on their experience with the teacher. Comments are viewed and approved by volunteer moderators for appropriateness, if a student moderator is available for that school, that student will decide what is acceptable(see below). The site is also managed by 8 Master Administrators, who control the operation of the entire site. Over one million teachers are graded on the website. The site was launched in August of 2001 by Michael Hussey, as part of the now defunct RateMy(TM) Network, and is the sister site of RateMyProfessors.com (which focuses on college and university students).

The three categories used for rating teachers are Clarity, Helpfulness, and the most controversial; Easiness. The ratings for Clarity and Helpfulness are tallied and averaged, giving an average score for each teacher. Easiness is not factored into the overall score, as the sites owners maintain that an "easy" score is not necessarily a good score. One offered reason as to why "Easiness" is not a good basis for an opinion is because some students might find the subject that the teacher teaches substantially easier than other subjects, while others may have difficulty in the subject.

In addition to students being able to rate their teachers, parents have the option of rating the performance of their children's teachers on Expectations, Difficulty, and Respect. The website claims that over 70% of teachers are rated positively, 20% score a medium range, and 10% rate poorly.

The website is extremely controversial and it's use is banned in a large proportion of schools. [1] The website does not promise that one person could not leave as many different comments as they like. Moderation is done by volunteers and only students can be moderators. Many school pages are not moderated and contain many of the types of comments the site claims to filter. The page offers no warnings to students leaving multiple posts or using multiple identities but promises to expose teachers who attempt to log in under false pretenses.

RateMyTeachers currently serves students, parents and teachers in the United States, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and India.

1 Credibility
2 Upcoming Developments
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Credibility

It is fair to say the credibility of this site is often questioned.One example is the Queensland college of teachers called for the shutdown of the page "until it can be established that it provides a credible service." This group noted that many fictional teachers were among those rated on the site. source:http://www.qct.edu.au/pdf/RateMyTeacherResponseJan2007.pdf

As stated above over a million people are targets of comments and there are nine people moderating the site other than the children themselves.

[edit] Upcoming Developments

RMT recently went through a review of all the site's moderators as a way to try and keep them out of the bad press. There is also a team of six working on a monthly newsletter for the site.