Teacher Rankings (Part 2)

By Christopher (Age 13, Chinese International School)

Should there be a teacher ranking system for Hong Kong? No, I do not agree. Hong Kong would be using the same system as Los Angeles. This is not a very effective system and I strongly go against it.

The rating system currently in place is a system where there would be a standardized test that every student has to take. The teacher would then be rated by his or her students' progress or improvement. Therefore it's not really the teacher you are assessing but rather the students. This is unfair as 90% of standardized tests are beyond the control of the teachers. In the end, no matter how passionate or effective a teacher is, it's always up to the student's willingness to learn. Attitude is altitude.

Another major problem with this system is the message it is giving to all the teachers. As the teacher's career is at stake if they they get a bad ranking, they would have to concentrate on the test scores. Tests do not determine how good a student is. You can't have a student great at memorizing but terrible at critical thinking. Einstein always said that creativity is the key to every genius. All these rankings would just encourage quantity of work from students rather than quality.

This is also degrading the teachers, taking away the love and passion for teaching and turning it into a system where the only thing that matters is your rank. This ranking is clearly disrespectful to teachers. Their job is to teach the younger generation so their knowledge could be passed on. Now the only way to becoming a teacher is to drill and kill the students rather than teaching the love of learning.

Although you may say that this ranking system would tell teachers whether they need to improve or not, this still does not mean that the teacher would know how to improve or what to improve.

In conclusion, the ranking systems need to be changed into a more effective system rather than looking simply at the students' scores.