It makes me very nervous that students can just bomb the site with no ID or accountability of any kind.

Parents doing the same thing would make me just as nervous.

There are two types of involved parents: the conscientious kind and the mad-at-the-world kind. But at least the mad-at-the-world kind seldom travel in packs. You can't say the same thing about students.

If a kid has something uncomplimentary to say about a teacher in a public forum, who is to hold that person accountable for his or her statement? How do we know it's true? How do we evaluate whether a group of three or four students is flooding the site with comments from a few public terminals?

I'm not necessarily saying that a policy similar to a newspaper's Letters policy, wherein all correspondents are identified before the world, is necessary.

But we have another animal at our local newspaper, a telephone poll. You can stuff that ballot box. I know: I tested it to see whether I could vote more than once. I could. From the same phone. On redial. But it was a stupid poll on the OJ trial, not something identifying an otherwise private citizen for public scrutiny in a way that might affect her job evaluation.

Somehow, the "voting" needs to be regulated. I think everyone needs to register, with real email addresses, not Hotmail or Yahoo, and that that information should be used to police abuse of the system and the ratees by the raters. It should also be kept in close confidence, not leaked or sold, under threat of prosecution.

Adult whistleblowers have to be identified to someone. Student critics should have to meet the same standards, especially when their criticism may be less a matter of professional competence than a matter of personality.

I know a teacher who is loved or hated. This year, she is hated. She doesn't pass people because of their age. I'd hate to see the kinds of "ratings" she'd get. Some of her most vocal opponents are parents.

Regards--
Mary Anne