Grades for Teachers

The times are past when it was only schoolchildren whose stomachs churned before they got their grades.

Now teachers in Germany are being graded by their pupils.

Many teachers are vehemently opposed to it. They are not so much afraid of how they are evaluated, but rather upset because the results are then posted on the Internet -- and accessible to millions of Internet users.

More than 150,000 users have so far registered on the Web site Spickmich.de and over the past four months alone they have posted their evaluations of a good 100,000 teachers, according to the Web site's creators, who have already had to defend their creation in court.

Judges in Cologne, however, ruled in late June that grading teachers on the Internet is covered under the basic right to free expression.

The verdict rejected a suit filed by a secondary-school teacher who felt that data protection rules concerning her had been violated by the Web site.

Violation of privacy?

Many teachers say their privacy rights have been violated by the pupils' assessments being posted on the Web site without their approval.

The teachers are graded according to such categories as "motivated" or "good instruction," "easy examinations" -- or even "sexy."

Heinz-Peter Meidinger, chairman of the German Teachers Association, said that evaluations in such a form do not really reveal much.

"Whether an examination is easy or not cannot be a criterion, since, after all, it's the curriculum which has to be fulfilled," he said.

Providing feedback

The Web site's creators say they are "baffled" by the nationwide uproar. They say students are only being offered the chance, via a non-commercial channel, to provide teachers with some feedback about their classroom instruction.

"Teachers also must learn to live with criticism," said Bernd Dicks, a 24-year-old social sciences student and one of three people behind the Web site.

Dicks added that the pupils are largely quite satisfied with their teachers. On a grading scale of one to six, the teachers' average grade is 2.7 -- and lately improving.

While some psychologists say that teachers should learn to accept evaluation by their students, others caution that educators are virtually unprotected against the criticism on the Internet.

"There is a lack of dialogue," said Wolfgang Hagemann, a psychotherapist who has written a book on the stress teachers face in Germany.

No tolerance for violence

Meanwhile, the education minister for the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, Barbara Sommer, categorically ruled out the danger that the Internet grades are used in deciding whether to hire a teacher.

Sommer added that punitive legal action would be taken in the future against any harassment of teachers on the Internet.

"We cannot accept it when teachers are exposed in an often humiliating fashion," the minister said.

In a few cases, the Web site has had messages posted that called for violence against teachers. Dicks confirmed that two entries on the Web site had been erased.

But still, the site is not totally immune from attempts at manipulation, one teacher near the northern city of Hanover recently showed.

He registered himself as a pupil and then posted high grades about his own teaching colleagues. Within a few days, seven of those were listed in the top 10 rankings of Germany's best teachers.