Student Survey Questions: valid? reliable?

As the TKES year draws to a close, it appears "the system" has some significant flaws.  There are some good elements to the new system (the TAPS in general are a good start), but other aspects are woefully unscientific, unreliable, even unprofessional.  This post focuses on the Student Survey Questions of Instructional Practice for grades 6-8.

1. It is possible that the student survey questions will not and can not lead to valid and reliable results (but we will use the results to evaluate teachers anyway).
2. The questions themselves can not apply to all classes or all teachers or all grade levels.
3. Most of the questions themselves are impossible to score a "strongly agree" due to the fact that a 12 year old is answering the question.  (I typically do not "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree" to anything.  Better choices would be: Most of the time, Usually, Sometimes, Not very often, etc.)
4. Because the questions can not apply to each teacher, to determine teacher effectiveness, the teachers will be compared to other teachers in the school, the district, and the state (thus the "School, District, and State Mean" and "State Median" columns).  Meaning, our effectiveness is not being graded against a teaching standard (the survey question), but against other teachers.  (What if we graded students against each other and not the curriculum standard?  That would be nonsense.)

Question #6: "My teacher chooses activities and assignments based on what students need to learn."  Yes, all the time, during class, for homework, for the day, the week, nine weeks, the year, and for all three years in middle school.  What else do teachers do?  How could a student possibly answer anything other than "strongly agree"?  Because they do not know; they could not know.  Anyone without strong pedagogical training, knowledge, and practice is not even qualified to answer that question.  Teachers even collaborate across grade levels so that there is continuity of learning in middle school.  We are not having students fill out word search puzzles.  87% of my students answered positively to that; however, at least one student answered strongly disagree to all questions.

Question #7: "My teacher gives students as much individual attention as they need [emphasis added] to be successful."  Laughable survey question.  58% of my students answered positively to that.  Think of what a classroom would look like to have 90% of the students answer "strongly agree" to that (I can not even imagine); remember most classrooms are overcrowded....

Question #10:  "My teacher allows me to work with different groups of students depending on the activity we are doing."  Of course we do, any time, all the time, every time - depending on the activity that is assigned to accomplish the learning goal as determined by the teacher so that the students will learn the curriculum.  But, it does not mean everyday or whenever the students want to.  The long-believed, and growing perception that collaborative learning is as effective as direct instruction is wrong.  The conditions of effective collaborative learning to mean direct instruction are so high, no one meets them.  Stacks of high-quality research show that over and over again (I can send you sources if you want because it was an influence in my doctoral study).  I received 47% positive response on that question.  Again, anyone without strong pedagogical training, knowledge, and practice is not even qualified to answer that question.

It appears to me that if I want higher scores on my survey results, I will need to create (another) system for next year to teach middle school students not only the state curriculum of concepts and skills, but also how to identify and understand the Teacher Performance Standards, pedagogy on something they have no knowledge of (so I can get better survey results), and master the Student Learning Objectives.  If only I could see my students for a full class period each day.