PrepTest 154, Section 1, Question 4
Oscar: Clearly, student evaluations provide the best assessment(60 more words not shown)
The dialogue provides the most(11 more words not shown)
- Astudents are ever(7 more words not shown)
- Bstudents’ opinions may(7 more words not shown)
- Cstudent evaluations furnish(6 more words not shown)
- Dteacher performance should(7 more words not shown)
- Estudent evaluations are(8 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if the teacher gives everyone an A without teaching them much? The students might love the class. That wouldn't make the teacher good at teaching.
Oscar's question—who could judge better than the students?—doesn't settle the issue. A neutral observer might see things the students overlook. A teacher who gives necessary but unwelcome feedback, or insists on reasonable classroom discipline, might be less popular than a teacher who lets everything slide. Being liked and doing the job well can come apart.
Bettina raises a different concern: timing. Students usually evaluate a class when it ends, but they may not appreciate a teacher's impact until years later. She therefore suggests evaluations by other teachers as a supplement or possibly a better alternative.
Would the other teachers necessarily be better judges? We could question that too. Colleagues competing for advancement might have their own reasons to rate one another unfairly. But we don't have to decide which evaluation system really is best. We're identifying the speakers' disagreement.
What we’re looking for
Oscar presents student evaluations as the best assessment. Bettina's concern is that those evaluations alone may miss something important, so another source could improve on them. Look for that dispute over whether student evaluations give us the best assessment, rather than a claim that students can never judge their teachers.
Working the answers
- A
“Ever” goes much further than Bettina's objection. She says students generally fail to appreciate a teacher's impact until years later. That leaves room for a good judgment later, and doesn't say that every student judgment is inadequate even at the time. Oscar thinks students can judge; Bettina hasn't taken the opposite position that they never can.
- B
Bettina's timing concern suggests that students' views can develop as they come to appreciate a teacher's impact. But Oscar says nothing about whether opinions change over the years. Believing students are the best available judges wouldn't require believing that their opinions stay fixed. We lack opposing views here.
- CCorrect
“Optimal” means best. Oscar explicitly says student evaluations provide the best assessment. Bettina questions their adequacy at the usual evaluation time and suggests that peer evaluations could supplement them or offer a better alternative. This is the dispute about whether student evaluations furnish the best assessment.
- D
Bettina doesn't insist on eliminating student evaluations. A supplement adds something to an existing evaluation, so her proposal leaves room to keep the students' views and add their teachers' colleagues' views. Mentioning a possible alternative also isn't a demand that no student evaluations be conducted.
- E
Bettina states when evaluations usually happen. Oscar never addresses that timing. His praise of student evaluations doesn't contradict the claim that they normally occur at the end of a class. The fact motivating Bettina's objection is not itself a demonstrated point of disagreement.
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