Someone mentioned this website to me a while back and it just struck me wrong. The site is Rate My Coaches, based on the idea of Rate My Teachers, yet with a much more primitive interface. You can provide numeric and verbal feedback about coaches at high schools and colleges across the US.
But the interface isn’t the problem. The whole idea behind mostly anonymous ratings of coaches seems useless. What does something like this accomplish? It’s generally accepted that people don’t speak out until they are unhappy – so ratings services are biased from the start. How could you put any credence into ratings like this, knowing anyone with an ax to grind could submit multiple negative comments, or just the opposite. The site talks about how they want comments kept clean and objective, but take one look at the posts on their blog and it’s clear they expect most to be negative. It’s just a weird vibe that I get.
If you want to submit feedback on coaches, send it to the people who oversee them – be it your local league/club, the school AD, or similar supervisor. Many organizations have feedback forms and such – so take advantage of them. Sure – there may be no action based on your feedback, but if enough feedback comes in it may spur action.
Sure – this means potential students can’t see the feedback, but unless the information can be independently verified, it seems like it is of little use to students and teachers researching programs. About the only people it benefits are alumni who want to vent.
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September 16th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
IMO, stealth ratings are borderline cowardly and often times completely out of school. If a parent/player has a legitimate complaint against a coach they should follow protocol and help in advancing the program with constructive criticism. I agree with you Mike that the vibe of such internet reviews feels bad.
September 17th, 2008 at 9:44 am
“It’s generally accepted that people don’t speak out until they are unhappy – so ratings services are biased from the start.”
Actually it’s “generally accepted” that people will speak out when they’re either strongly satisfied or strongly dissatisfied, which is exactly why ratings services work. Very good coaches will stand out and very bad coaches will stand out. Interesting though that the site says most ratings it gets are positive.
September 17th, 2008 at 10:02 am
It’s actually hard to get a feel for the ratings as there isn’t any way to see them in large numbers – you poke around schools hoping to come across a school that actually has ratings. Now the Sampler page has almost all positive ratings – but those are selected by them. So very hard to tell. But I know having run a variety of organizations that people will rarely speak up to say ‘good job’ – they are much more likely to speak up when they are upset. Your mileage may vary.
But the ratio of good vs bad is irrelevant because you have no idea how many are astroturfed or solicited vs random. And only a few schools might have a big enough sample of ratings to make it statistically meaningful and enough to overcome any biased/planted ratings.
I think feedback is a great thing – but anonymous rating sites aren’t the way to get it.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I wonder about bias on both sides. Will coaches and their families rate themselves highly? They’d be dumb not to, right?
I use lots of anonymous ratings services for restaurants, hotels, etc and always wondered if they rate themselves, although the ratings usually seem pretty accurate.
September 18th, 2008 at 8:46 am
That’s what astroturfing is – someone posting comments about themselves. So yes – it’s a problem on both sides.
Back when people had one email address from their ISP, you could use email verification and have a good chance people really were who they said they were. They might have a work address too, but that was it. But now with free email trivial to get – you can rate yourself or someone else dozens of times with very little effort. Now in sites like you mention (restaurants, etc) they usually have high enough traffic to overcome any messing around AND there just isn’t a reason for people to go through extra trouble to skew the ratings except maybe the owners. But with teachers and coaches, emotions can run VERY high – so you find more people, usually disgruntled, who want to ‘get back at them’ So they are more likely to go through the hassle of creating freebie email accounts and rating things multiple times. When you only have a couple ratings for a person – it makes a huge difference.
But for things where nobody really has a vested interest – anonymous ratings are fine. This site uses them for every post. Once you get a handful, it can be a good indication of how people reacted to a story and I use it as honest feedback and also to rate the ‘most popular’ tab on the front page.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
This sit is nice, and i think it is needed. The premise and anonymous feature is great. If i had a tool like this back when i played ball i could have made some better decisions.
But we all say that, right!
For anyone that cares i found another coach ratings site, that seems to have a little more depth. The site is the following…
http://www.ratethecoach.com
October 9th, 2010 at 9:29 am
I’m currently slow releasing CoachGrader.com for college coach reviews. A lot of great comments here… could I ask you all to review coachgrader.com and send feedback as well? ALL feedback would be greatly appreciated!
[anonymous ratings & reviews] I’m working on my registration system to allow signing in by facebook, twitter, google, etc. then I’ll change it to allow members to display their username, real name, or remain anonymous. BUT I think I still have to default to anonymous comments to try and build the number of comments up for site content …I do get the picture though: one real comment w/ a real name is like gold… it’s more valuable than 50 anonymously posted.
October 13th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Coaching evaluations can be problematic.
CJ – I’m not sure “playing time” is a fair question. College coaches are judged on wins and losses, hopefully with consideration for the the student-athletes’ well-being and academic progress. Also, even for players, it’s a bit difficult to rate quality of training. As a former D1 player, I don’t have the same appreciation I have now as a coach in terms of what the coach wanted to get out of training.
I think for coaching evaluation, a big problem is we ask questions that are best left to the club leadership (hopefully an experienced Dir of Coaching/Training) — such as effective training sessions, etc. For youth programs, especially at the non-competitive level, the proof is down the road in some sense.
We try to ask more questions relating to the coaches’ competencies in non-training areas:
1) Did the coach communicate a philosophy for the season?
2) Did the coach ensure that administrative items such as schedules, locations, fees, and related details were communicated in a timely and clear manner.
3) Did the coach provide to you an evaluation or assessment of your child’s performance?
4) Was the coach accessible to discuss concerns or issues you had?
5) Was the coach prepared for matches and training (appropriate attire, on-time, medical kit, etc.)
6) Did the coach follow generally the club policy in terms of playing time (U12 and below only)?
7) Do you feel your child enjoyed his/her experience on the team?
8) Would you recommend the club retain your child’s coach?
As you can note, these are yes/no and for ‘nos’, we ask to give an example or provide additional comments or you can’t proceed with the survey.
The responses go to the survey administer who aggregates the answers. He has the ability to track who provided the answer because we assign each parent a unique ID and they can’t take the survey multiple times — but if there is an issue, we go back to the team as a whole and ask the parents to meet individually with the head of competitive/DOC.
We feel this way, the parents have input into areas they are qualified to answer and we can balance their comments with the evaluation (that is supposed to occur) by the club’s DOC (who is supposed to attend X training sessions and X matches).
Not perfect, but does provide some useful insights without coaches feeling parents are evaluating them in areas the parents are not really qualified to judge.
October 14th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
I don’t think I could be that detailed w/ my questions… Who would want to read it? (Coach Spurrier is always on time and has the medical kit with him at all times.)Based on the success of ratemyprofessors.com’s simple 5 point ratings I’m probably already too detailed. (theirs: overall quality, helpfulness, clarity, easiness, hotness) In the end I may have to condense everything down to something like theirs… hopefully not though.
-I’ll also be taking lots of things into account when constantly tweaking the grading algorithm itself. Like you said, how much should a Parent’s grade for technical instruction count vs. a former player, fan, recruit, etc.
Appreciate it! I’m always listening & thinking. Soon I may not have as much time to respond… but I’ll still be listening.