Should Students Rank Professors?

Stanley Fish is against students evaluating their teachers. So is Alan Jacobs -- or to be more precise, Professor Jacobs thinks that evaluations should at least be delayed until students put some time between the end of semester rush and what ought to be considered, dispassionate judgments about their professors.

These delays seem wise to me, though on the bigger question of whether or not student evaluations should be conducted, I am very much on the side of Ross Douthat, who argues that "more often than not, a good teacher will be recognized as such by his students while he's teaching them, and a bad one will be accurately-pegged as well."

In my experience, that is indisputably true: the teachers who struck my high school self as the best were the most impressive and effective, or so I still believe at thirty. The same goes for my college experience. The professors I deemed the best turn out, on long reflection, to retain their exalted places in my mental rankings. The same goes for the worst teachers. What I don't know is whether I ranked the professors in the middle as accurately.

Do readers share this experience? Or do some of you rank the educators of your past differently given the benefit of hindsight?