Teacher Rankings

By Albert (Age 12.5, Canadian International School)

In Los Angeles, there is a new system for ranking teachers. The Los Angeles Times ranks the teachers by how well the students do on a test. The Times published the rankings in the newspaper and most teachers were insulted and couldn't figure out how test scores could determine how good a teacher is. I think this is a very unfair and disrespectful way of ranking the teachers and it should be stopped. This is because the student may not have studied and got a bad grade, thereby affecting the teacher's ranking and reputation.

This is insulting for the teacher because if the teacher has a low rank, he/she might be teased, bullied, and his/her students might even have no respect for the teacher. It also insults teachers by showing the public how bad or how well they teach. It might even get them fired from their job because of the low rank. It will also lower the teacher's reputation and no one will like the teacher.

Another reason this is a bad idea is because learning is more than just test scores. It is also learning about how to live after graduation. If the newspaper rated the teachers on exams, the learning would be based on exams and memorization because the teacher would be so eager to do well on the ranking and avoid being insulted and disrespected. It would also make the quality of learning poor, despite the good grades on the test, because the students won't really understand the content.

The main reason that this is a bad rating system is that it is unfair. If the teachers teach the students with all their heart and soul, but the students don't study or just didn't do well this time, the teachers get blamed for it when it is really the student's fault that they got a bad mark. The teachers will be unfairly judged because 90% of the student's test mark comes from the student, not from the teacher. The other 10% might be help from the teacher or some tips, but it is mainly the student who determines the test mark. If the student didn't understand what the teacher taught, it is the student's job to get help, so the test score should be blamed on the student instead of the teacher.

On the other hand, it can help improve teaching quality because the teachers will be motivated to do better and not get insulted. But most teachers will be so insulted, even the ones who did well on the ranking, that they will most likely try to stop the Times from doing this because it is unfair.

Overall, I think this is a very bad system for rating teachers, who don't know and don't want to be rated in this very unfair way. I think that it would be much better if the Times rated the teachers based on what the students think of the teacher and what the principal thinks of the teacher. It would also be better if the Times told the teachers that they were rating them.