Websites like ratemyprofessors.com promise to help students sort out the good, the bad and even the ugly among college instructors, but the value of what they deliver is debatable.

Ratemyprofessors.com allows students to grade teachers in four categories; clarity, helpfulness and easiness, on a scale from one to five, plus hot or not hot. Teachers are then assigned a grade for overall quality based on the combined average of just the helpfulness and clarity ratings from all users. Students are also prompted to list their grade in the class, whether attendance was mandatory and how much the textbook was used.

As students register for fall quarter, many will use ratemyprofessors.com or similar sites to review teacher ratings. EvCC students have written more than 1,000 reviews on 218 instructors to date, earning the college an average rating of 3.43.

Ratings for EvCC instructors are similar to other local community colleges such as Bellevue, North Seattle and Shoreline, which average 3.36, 3.53 and 3.42, respectively.

"I believe that all instructors take this information seriously, we all have egos," says political science instructor Bob Housner.

"I appreciate reading positive feedback from students and it is also helpful to see the ways in which a student thinks you can improve instruction," says Andrea Cahan, an EvCC math instructor and 2008 "You Made a Difference" award winner who boasts a 4.9 quality rating at ratemyprofessors.com.

"Great teaching style and will work with you until you understand the material. Delightful both in and outside of class. Extremely fair in grading. Need more professors like her in the world," reads one review on Cahan.

In fact, according to the website's FAQ, more than 65 percent of ratings are positive.

Despite the fact that the majority of user ratings are positive, instructors, and particularly mathemeticians, take issue with the notion of anonymous, random student reviews.

This is because the sytem is not statistically valid. Ratings tend to be "either great or awful, nothing in between, [when] in fact... most often plenty of students fall in the middle but don't take the time to go on the site and post a rating," says statistics instructor Peg Balachowski.

It is evident from reading just a few ratings that whether positive or negative, users don't hold back.

"If you have any sense... you'll steer clear and run. I've had dozens of professors, and he is by far the worst. Changes the syllabus daily, explains theories incorrectly, is constantly saying 'wait, forget that' when explaining in lectures and takes little care as to whether his students are actually learning," wrote one anonymous EvCC student.

In addition to concerns about the lack of statistical validity are concerns about combining practical catagories such as helpfulness with seemingly frivolous ones such as hotness.

"I think I its OK and brings a little humor to the evaluation process," says Housner. "I'm sure everyone wants to be considered 'hot.' However, I wonder what the students would think if the instructors were asked to rate each student based on the degree of 'hotness?'"

Although ratemyprofessors.com has made information formerly exchanged in the hallways available for nationwide public consumption, instructor reviews are nothing new. Students are already asked to fill out instructor rating forms, which include questions "directly related to the classroom setting, the material in the class, and the pedagogy (the way the teacher actually teaches)," says Balachowski.

The dilemma for students is how to know their teachers are making the grade without access to those confidential reports.

"The college is committed to excellence in the classroom and a positive learning experience for our students," says Sandra Fowler-Hill, vice president of instruction. "We use direct observations, classroom evaluations (IDEAS forms), and administrative evaluations by the deans to assure that professional performance is assessed regularly... and feedback is shared with the individual faculty in order to continuously improve," says Hill.

In comparison, ratemyprofessors.com's FAQ states its purpose is to streamline a process "students have been doing forever-- checking in with each other... to figure out who's a great professor and who's one you might want to avoid," according to the FAQ. While the value of the site must be judged by each individual user, the fact that more than 3,000 comments are added daily demonstrates ratemyprofessors.com will continue to be a popular way for students to turn the tables on teachers.