Some people don’t believe teacher bias has an effect on students’ grades, I do. I believe that grading should be standards based instead of effort based in order to combat biased grading. Standardized grading is a method that focuses on learning and helps increase achievement and usually combined with updated instructional practices and culture to better engage students and foster a positive environment. In a research book called ‘Standards-Based Learning in Action Moving From Theory to Practice, it shows a “learning goals ladder” having different steps to the writing process that need to be completed and certain targets that students need to hit. The book also discusses how teachers’ relationships with students can lead to favoritism and unfairness towards other students. Going forward, I feel teachers need to work on “standardized grading” and giving all students fair and equal treatment.

Throughout my years in school, I’ve struggled with spelling and grammar in writing and reading. Being dyslexic I’ve taken all types of English classes in high school: Reading seminar, English 1, English 2, Composition 1 and Composition 2. The classes that I think had the most unfair grading were the regular English classes. With so many other students in the class, I think English teachers care more about the students they deem to be ‘smart’. I’ve turned in assignments that were incomplete and missing questions, and still received full credit. It feels like the teacher has given up on everyone else in the class except the students they see potential in. Those kids will get comments on their assignments and if they don’t complete something they asked if they’re okay or what happened.

Students are graded differently based on how smart their teachers think they are. Specifically in English classes, Students aren’t held to the same standards. Even if they are given the same work, write the same things and are in the same class, they aren’t treated the same.

Over time, I’ve learned that if I don’t try as hard at the beginning of the year and make it seem like that’s the best I can do, then when I do something good, I get better grades. Teachers are also less harsh on my spelling or grammar mistakes and are shocked that my writing is good. A teacher I had did not have high expectations of me and every time I did an assignment she would get on me about how I spelled something wrong and my grammar was “horrendous” to the point where I was dropping letter grades. After that, I put in the effort on writing because the specific topic was something I really cared about and I wanted it to be seen for more than just my grammar mistakes. When I did turn in that paper my teacher pulled me aside and told me how amazing my writing was and said, “I didn’t expect that from you.”

Madelyn Lehman (‘25) has always been there for me and she lets me copy some of her work at times. Lehman has always been a good student, earning all A’s in difficult classes and giving nothing but her best in schoolwork. We’d work together on assignments, and when we submitted almost the same thing, we got different grades. Not drastically different, but still different. I would get an A, and the teacher would tell me how well I did. Lehman, on the other hand, would get a high B and be told what to fix. I know why she’s held to higher standards; they think she can accomplish more. “Comma spacing here, could reword this, splitting this into two, things that she would need to change in her next assignment.”

But is this fair if we’re doing the same work in the same class?

Standards based grading should be what teachers are doing instead of effort based in order to combat biased grading. Standards based grading is less biased with little to no favoritism when categorizing students grades.

I think we need to rethink how we approach grading. Students shouldn’t be graded on what the teacher thinks they are capable of doing but should be graded on what they have done. There are harder classes for that exact reason. AP, honors and CCP. Students putting in more work should be recognized for what they are doing and how well it’s done, not graded based on what the teacher thinks they can accomplish.