As thousands of faculty committees have found out, “teacher evaluation” is a hopeless business. There is, thank God, no teacher meter, and there never is going to be one. A teacher’s major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student’s grandchild. A teacher, finally, has nothing to go on but faith, a student nothing to offer in return but testimony.
–Wendell Berry, “Wallace Stegner and the Great Community,” in What Are People For?: Essays
