W. Terry Dancer

Peer Rating in Higher Education

Abstract Peer rating has become a part of the academic environment. Good or bad, right or wrong, many institutions of higher learning require that faculty and administrators rely on some form of peer evaluation when decisions about promotion and tenure must be made. However, empirical research has consistently demonstrated that peer evaluations lack reliability and validity. Thus, decisions impacting the very essence of teaching in a university environment are made based upon unreliable and invalid testing. This article offers an alternative to the present system of peer evaluation. Instead of peer raters, raters would be persons outside the immediate system. In order to qualify, a rater must be a trained educator, researcher, statistician, counselor, and psychometrist. To those who might argue that such a person does not exist, then the researchers would ask, “How then can we expect our peers to be able to do the job?”