News

Teaching Evaluations Event at Northwestern Law

Along with the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s leadership, I will co-organise a Zoom panel entitled “Validity & Equity Problems in Law School Teacher Evaluations” on Thursday, 20 January at 12-2pm CT. Register here if you are interested. You can also record the event.

Northwestern’s Dean Hari Osofsky, along with myself, will host the event. Our speakers include Renee Allen of St. John’s and Jason Brennan from Georgetown. Rebecca Kreitzer (UNC), Katherine Macfarlane from Southern and Adam Scales at Rutgers. This is the description of the event:

Study after study has shown that student evaluations do not accurately measure teaching quality. They are also biased by the factors of race, gender, accent, disability, beauty, or other attributes of instructors unrelated to teaching abilities. Even though many colleges and universities have been able to recognize the problems in teaching evaluations and many law schools are now addressing other obstacles facing minorities and women in academia, reform efforts in evaluations remain a long way off in the legal profession. The panel includes a variety of academics to talk about recent teaching evaluations research and the implications for law school practice.

Faculty and administrators from law schools will find the event of greatest interest, as well people working in other departments at universities.