In an ever increasingly competitive global marketplace, a concern exists that American students are not being adequately prepared with the skills needed for the 21st century. As a remedy, improving quality of teacher instruction is a current national focus. Stakeholders are questioning current infrequent and inefficient methods of evaluating teacher performance. Many states are looking at using a 360 model of evaluating through multiple perspectives including the students themselves as key stakeholders. One method of accessing student voice and adding another perspective to teacher evaluations would be to include student evaluations in the rating of teacher performance, Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET). While using student evaluations of teacher performance is wide spread in higher education, the practice has been limited in public school settings until brought to light by the publication of the recent Gates Foundation MET (Measures of Effective Teaching) Project (2010). Currently, states across the nation are considering adding a student input component to teacher evaluations. With the validity and reliability of student evaluations in the university settings still under debate by professors, public school teachers also fear punitive measures and public judgment based on the verdicts of adolescents. This research examined the archival data from a program study of one high school's student evaluation implementation process, accessing teacher feedback from the initial evaluation process and then an adjusted implementation of student evaluations according to teacher feedback the following year. Based on mixed method design using both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze teacher questionnaires, focus group open-ended responses and statistical analysis of close-ended agree/disagree statements from teacher questionnaires, this study used triangulation to explore teacher reflections on their anxiety levels created by the student evaluation implementation process, the value they found in student evaluations, and the degree to which student evaluations facilitated change in their teaching instruction. Exploring possibilities through the eyes of teachers to reduce their anxiety and increase their value of student input, this study suggests ways to tap into the potential but underutilized resource in schools that could come from developing a mutually beneficial partnership between students and teachers to improve teacher instruction and increase student learning.

This dissertation investigated the relationship between course characteristics and student ratings of instruction at a large research intensive university. Specifically, it examined the extent to which academic field, course level, and class size were associated with variation in mean class ratings. Past research consistently identifies differences between student ratings in different academic fields, but offers no unifying conceptual framework for the definition or categorization of academic fields. Therefore, two different approaches to categorizing classes into academic fields were compared - one based on the institution's own academic college system and one based on Holland's (1997) theory of academic environments. Because the data violated assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance, traditional ANOVA procedures were followed by post-hoc analyses using bootstrapping to more accurately estimate standard errors and confidence intervals. Bootstrapping was also used to determine the statistical significance of a difference between the effect sizes of academic college and Holland environment, a situation for which traditional statistical tests have not been developed. Findings replicate the general pattern of academic field differences found in prior research on student ratings and offer several unique contributions. They confirm the value of institution-specific approaches to defining academic fields and also indicate that Holland's theory of academic environments may be a useful conceptual framework for making sense of academic field differences in student ratings. Building on past studies that reported differences in mean ratings across academic fields, this study describes differences in the variance of ratings across academic fields. Finally, this study shows that class size and course level may impact student ratings differently - in terms of interaction effects and magnitude of effects - depending on the academic field of the course. / Ph. D.

L'objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier l'interdépendance des ressources scolaires et des ressources individuelles dans la production du capital humain. À travers trois cas d'études sur données françaises, différentes méthodes sont proposées pour analyser l'effet des politiques éducatives tout en tenant compte des comportements des individus. Le premier chapitre montre que les politiques d'éducation prioritaire sont susceptibles de conduire les familles, notamment les plus avantagées socialement, à contourner les établissements traités. Ces stratégies d'évitement sont de nature à contrebalancer les effets des moyens supplémentaires sur les résultats des élèves. Le deuxième chapitre cherche à savoir si les choix d'orientation des élèves sont contraints par J'offre scolaire locale. Nous montrons que l'ouverture d'un nouveau lycée augmente la proportion d'élèves qui poursuivent leurs études dans le second cycle, notamment en voie professionnelle. Enfin, le troisième chapitre montre que les étudiants tiennent compte de l'information contemporaine dont ils disposent sur leurs notes lorsqu'ils évaluent les qualités pédagogiques de leurs enseignants. / The main objective of this thesis is to study the interdependence of school resources and individual resources in human capital production. In three empirical analyses using French data, various methods arc proposed to evaluate the impact of educational policies, taking individual behaviors into account. The first chapter shows that compensatory education policies may result in individual sorting. The fact that socially more advantaged families tend to avoid treated schools cancels out additional resources positive effects on academic achievement. The second chapter examines whether pupils are constrained by local school supply. We find that opening a new high school increases the proportion of pupils who continue in upper secondary education, particularly in a vocational track. Studying how students evaluate teaching, the third chapter shows that they take contemporaneous information about their grades into account when they evaluate teachers' pedagogical qualities.