Validity and Equity Problems in Law School Teaching Evaluations
Thursday, January 20, 2022
12 – 2 pm CST
Zoom
Student evaluations are, as shown by study after study, not valid measures of teaching quality and are biased along the axes of gender, race, accent, age, disability, attractiveness, and other instructor attributes unrelated to teaching ability. Yet, even as many universities and colleges have begun reckoning with these established problems with teaching evaluations, and while many law schools have started tackling other barriers facing women and minorities in academia, attempts to reform evaluations have lagged behind in the legal academy.
This panel brings together a multidisciplinary group of scholars to discuss the most recent research on teaching evaluations and how law schools should proceed given what this work shows about the issues with such evaluations.
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Host
Hari Osofsky
Dean and Myra and James Bradwell Professor of Law, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law -
Moderator
Irina Manta
Professor of Law, Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University
Featured Panelists
Renee Allen
St. John’s University School of Law 
Jason Brennan
Georgetown University 
Rebecca Kreitzer
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill 
Katherine Macfarlane
Southern University Law Center 
Adam Scales
Rutgers Law School