RateMyTeachers.com is a review site used to rate K-12 and college teachers and schools. Participants are asked to rate their teachers on a scale of 1 to 5 in the categories of easiness, helpfulness, knowledge, and clarity, with the latter two factoring into an "overall quality" score. Individuals can also write brief comments on their experiences with the teachers. As of April 2010, over eleven million teachers had been rated on the website. RMT was launched in 2001 by Mister Message, LLC and later sold to former owner Patrick Nagle. RateMyTeachers.com currently services websites in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. RateMyTeachers.com was governed by a public community of volunteers who were granted the power to add, remove and delete teacher listings and teacher ratings. The public community was replaced in 2017 by a private moderation community. The private moderation community was tasked to manually re-review every rating and teacher added to RMT since 2001. The private moderation community reviewed over 100,000 ratings a day. However, the site got rid of all reviews due to a law in Europe that doesn't allow names to be displayed without permission of the individual. This new law led to a complete remodeling of the site. RateMyTeachers no longer allows students to write comments on the teachers, but they instead format reviews for comments on the class.
Controversy
RateMyTeachers.com is controversial in certain circles and many have questioned its approach. The site is open to the general public with no requirement to reveal their first or last name when commenting. This has led some to worry that those surfing the Internet can leave libellous comments without any repercussions to their own reputation. In 2007, the Queensland College of Teachers called for the shutdown of the page "until it can be established that it provides a credible service". In 2003, the New York State United Teachers sought a court injunction to shut down the site, though the request was denied on free speech grounds. In April 2007 the British education secretaryAlan Johnson said that the online harassment of teachers performed by sites such as RateMyTeachers.com needs to stop. This caused articles on RateMyTeachers by national and international press.
