In my years at Moorestown Friends School, I have witnessed and been a part of the process of hiring a new teacher three times. Each time, multiple candidates come in to teach a class overseen by someone from the department. I am baffled as to why the students are not asked for our input on which teacher we feel does the best job. Two of the three times, my classmates and I agreed that the wrong decision had been made in terms of hiring.

I have my own opinion about which candidate I feel was the most successful in teaching us, and our opinions as a class are largely the same. If the department head simply asked for student feedback, they would get a different perspective on the candidates. Twice I have seen the teachers whom I personally liked the least be hired to teach us.  This year, one of my classes still talks about one of the candidates from last year whom I felt did an excellent job and would make a good teacher for us. I believe that if the department had known this, the preferred candidate would have been hired.

A process could be set up for the times the school goes about hiring a new teacher.  After each candidate-taught class, the students could either have a feedback session with the hiring committee or fill out a survey similar to those completed at the end of the school year.  With these opinions taken into account, a more educated choice could be made by the committee as to which candidate they choose to hire.

A blog on Leiter Reports reveals that multiple educational institutions have students as voting members of their hiring committees.  While that might not be the best decision for MFS, I believe that a vote to represent the students as a whole would be fair to say the least.  Instead, the administration continues to hire teachers for its students without the least bit of input from them.