ing ironies of modern educational technology" (Damron "Three" 12).(1)
In light of the accumulating research on the invalidity and sundry pernicious effects of SNEFs, Paul Rosenfeld and S. C. Erikson, two researchers at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, University of Michigan, recommend that colleges "eliminate the questionable practice of using the results of student ratings for purposes of administrative assessment" (in Damron "Politics" 19). Michael Scriven, who has conducted extensive analyses on faculty evaluation methodology, warns administrators against using such invalid forms for personnel decisions :
All [SNEFs] are face-invalid and certainly provide a worse basis for adverse personnel action than the polygraph in criminal cases. Based on examination of some hundreds of forms that are or have been used for personnel decisions (as well as professional development), the previous considerations entail that not more than one or two could stand up in a serious [legal] hearing. (in Haskell 9)But the elimination of SNEFs is not going to happen any time soon because they serve purposes that have nothing to do with evaluating effective teaching. They serve, for example, a PR function. However fraudulent they may be, SNEFs allow administrators to tell students, taxpayers, regents and legislators that teaching is being evaluated and "good" teaching encouraged. Students want SNEFs because these forms enable them to compel professors to give the kind of course students prefer, which, to an increasing number of students, usually means a course that has few demands and high grades. SNEFs allow students to reward professors for doing the wrong thing (Hocutt 61).
In this the interests of administrators and students coincide. Administrators want satisfied student consumers (and happy parents and taxpayers). So administrators use SNEFs to make sure that classroom instruction does not seriously displease student "customers." Through SNEFs, administrators "encourage" professors not to be too rigorous and too demanding, or to have standards that are too high. lndeed, the more invalid the device to assess the quality of instruction, the better, from the point of view of administrators, because invalid and vacuous SNEFs--SNEFs that do not cogently assess instructor-mediated student learning--are sensitive to student likes and dislikes (2). SNEFs thus induce faculty to get "good" ratings by teaching in ways that please the students, but which may not educate them. This explains why SNEFs almost never ask students whether the course was demanding, the assignments difficult, the tests probing, the standards high (all variables linked to increasing student learning), or whether they developed an ability to identify the main ideas and significant implications of a subject, or a respect for unconventional interpretations of material studied, or an understanding of the most fundamental or important ideas of the subject (Renner 128).
The SNEF, as currently used in higher education, is a device for making classrooms comfortable for and marketable to students who are increasingly under-prepared for and disengaged from rigorous academic study. Consumer satisfaction trumps student achievement. As Haskell puts it, the SNEF is a "powerful tool in assuring classroom changes that lead to the retention of student tuition dollars by assenting to student consumer demands and of parents who foot the tuition bill" (Haskell 12l; see also Damron "Three" 19).
Since faculty have had these fraudulent devices imposed upon them, they might as well exploit SNEFs for their own advantage. As Damron contends, "In an atmosphere in which good teaching is equated with high student ratings, it makes sense in terms of simply survival to weave into one's classroom performance virtually anything that elevates such ratings" (Damron "Instructor" 20). Haskell also seems to accept the calculated exploitation of SNEFs: "If a faculty can chose teaching styles, grading levels, and course content, s/he will naturally prefer choices that are expected to result in hig