A year ago I was sitting at a conference lunch table with nine other college and high school writing teachers when the discussion turned to peer review: students evaluating each other’s essay drafts. I was surprised when one professor’s comment, “I no longer assign peer review of student essays, because the poor results aren’t worth the class time it takes,” was immediately assented to by six other people at the table. I asked the group what they meant by “poor results.” Most of them agreed it was the quality of students’ comments on each other’s essays—at best vague and unhelpful and often misleading or incorrect.