In schools all over the world, teachers often have trouble being fair to all students and treating all of them completely equal.  True neutrality is hard to achieve in a classroom setting, and being unbiased is something that teachers frequently struggle with.  Teacher bias is whenever a teacher gives some students either an unfair advantage or an unfair disadvantage in the classroom, whether intentional or not.  There are many different types of it; including but not limited to gender bias, racial bias, cultural bias, and economic bias.  It is happening all over the country, whether people realize it or not.  Teacher bias is a major problem in schools that needs to be discussed more, because it can have a great effect on the future of students.

Most teachers are biased and unfair in some way or another; but many of them either do not realize it, or they do not want to admit it.  Teachers love to brag about their classroom being completely fair and neutral, but this is usually not completely the case.  Admitting that they are in fact biased towards some students is something that teachers often have a lot of trouble doing.  The fact of the matter is that teachers play favorites, whether they believe it or not.  When teachers favor some students over others, it may be consciously or it may be unconsciously.  Whether it is realized or not, teacher bias is certainly happening.  There have been multiple studies that show that teacher bias does, in fact, exist; and is also a much bigger issue than most people would even expect.  One study gave students’ tests to two different teachers, one teacher that knew the students and one teacher that didn’t.  The grades that were given on the tests looked at by one teacher were often different from the grades on the tests looked at by the other.  (Vedantam).  This, of course, suggests that teacher bias can, in fact, affect a student’s grades by a significant amount.  It means that students may not get the grades that they actually deserve based on whether they know the material, but rather they will receive different grades based on whether or not the teacher likes them.  Therefore, how well liked a student is by their teachers can have a direct effect on their overall success in school, regardless of their work ethic.  The most extreme cases of teacher bias is when a teacher will deliberately change grades of a student based on how much they like them.  Most teachers would obviously not go that far, but these instances are still actually common enough to be a serious problem.  If a teacher does not like a certain student as much as the others, then that teacher can change the student’s grade whenever they feel like it.  When this happens, it frequently goes unnoticed, so teachers are often able to get away with it.  Again, these are only the most extreme cases, and only some teachers will actually do this.  

The more common form of conscious teacher bias is when a teacher bumps up the grade of one of some students, but does not do the same for all of them.  Teachers have many reasons for bumping up a student’s grade, but it is still a definite bias if that student did not do any extra work to earn it.  Curving tests and assignments to bring up all of the students’ grades is not bias, and lowering the grade of every student is also not technically bias, but when only some students have their grades changed while the rest do not is when the teacher is being unfair.  Obviously, not all teacher bias has to actually be conscious.  In fact most instances of teacher bias involve a teacher being unconsciously biased for or against some students without even actually realizing it.  When it comes to multiple choice tests or assignments that have a clear correct answer, subconscious and unaware teacher bias does not often have that drastic of an effect on the students’ grades.  The main place where the issue of subconscious teacher bias takes a huge toll is on written assignments and papers.  If a teacher wants a student to do well on an assignment while they are grading it, then that student is more likely to actually do well on it. This is because the teacher may not take off as many points for errors if they subconsciously want the student to do well; or the teacher may award more bonus points for good things the student has put down.  Also, if a teacher secretly does not like a student or does not want them to do well, then their assignments will already be looked at in a negative way.  This leads to the teacher being harsher when grading that student’s assignment because their subconscious biases come into effect.  

If a teacher is biased for or against a student in a class that mostly revolves around multiple choice tests, then subconscious teacher bias can obviously not take as much of an effect.  When it comes to classes that revolve around papers, however, a teacher’s bias for or against a student can make multiple letter grades of a difference.  Teachers always prefer some students over others, and have different biases when it comes to which students they like.  Even if this was not the case and if they could completely keep themselves from picking favorites, teachers would still not be able to be completely neutral when grading written assignments from students.  For example, if a teacher just got done reading a really good assignment from a student, then they might think the next assignment that they grade is a lot worse than it actually was.  This is because the thought of the good assignment may stay in their mind, which causes them to look at the next assignment differently.  The opposite can be true too.  If a teacher just finishes with an assignment that was particularly bad, then the next assignment may look particularly good in comparison and would receive a better grade, even if it was only mediocre.  If a teacher is grading papers, then the first paper that gets graded may receive a grade far different than what it deserved, because the teacher has not yet read any other papers to compare it too.  The last paper that gets graded may also be graded poorly, because the teacher has already graded so many papers and possibly could be grading differently by the time they get to the last one.  As a teacher grades a stack of papers, their grading parameters may slightly change from the first paper to the last paper.  Teachers may also read the beginning of a paper and immediately will think it is bad.  Then, they will automatically view the rest of the paper to be bad as well, even if the rest of it improves from the beginning.  Also, a paper may be great at the beginning and not so great the rest of the way, but a teacher might give it a good grade because the first impression was that it was a good paper.  (Kelly).  Teacher biases like this can be the difference between passing or failing, and can lead to students being overall more or less successful in their academic careers than they should be.  

Everyone knows that a big part of being successful in life involves getting good grades in school, so that is why it is extremely important that people are made aware of the teacher bias issue.  More teachers should be getting instructed on how to remain as neutral as possible with students in their classes.  Teachers should be taught to realize that they can often fall into subconscious biases, and they should always be trying their best to fix that.  They need to know about prevalent biases such as racial bias or gender bias, and how to reduce them.  Racial bias is when teachers let stereotypes about certain races affect how they think of particular students, and gender bias is when the teacher lets stereotypes about boy and girl students affect their judgement.  Both forms of teacher bias are fairly common.  Most teachers are obviously not actually racist or sexist, but that doesn’t mean that gender and racial biases do not exist.  Teachers will often frequently show subconscious favoritism towards the gender or race that they belong to.  Again, this does not make them racist or sexist in any way, but it does mean they are subconsciously biased.  Being a male student or a female student can give someone many different labels in a teacher’s eye.  Many assumptions and preconceptions are made about students just based on their gender in particular.  Girl students, for example, have the label of being generally better behaved in schools.  Many female teachers will look at it that way and will be somewhat biased against boys.  The reverse can be true as well.  Male teachers may be biased for boys and against girls in many instances.  A popular assumption is that girls are better at English assignments and boys are typically better at math.  Many studies show that this is not actually true.  These false assumptions can lead to girls being told that boys are better at math, and as a result, girls may get worse scores on math tests because of what they have been told.  (Vedantam).

Racial bias is an issue with teachers in schools as well and is arguably just as bad as gender bias.  Minority students are very often looked at as not as smart, and are less likely to be recommended for advanced classes.  (Klein).  Many African American and Latino students in particular have stated that they have felt these types of biases against them in some of their classes.  Teachers who grew up during the times when black and white students were separated in education are more likely to be especially biased in these situations.  These types of biases and stereotypes make it somewhat harder for minority students to succeed compared to Caucasian students.  It has also been argued by certain people that minority students actually have some academic advantages because of stereotypes and teacher bias.  For example, there are many scholarship opportunities for minority students that are appearing more and more recently.  The same goes for male and female students.  There are certain scholarships that are exclusive to either males or females; most notably academic scholarships.  All of this shows that one of the key causes of teacher biases is, in fact, stereotyping.  Students are very frequently stereotyped and put into categories based not only on race and gender, but also on income and political beliefs.  Whether students come from rich or poor families can often determine whether a teacher believes them to be smart or not.  Students from poor families are often times assumed to be less intelligent by teachers; and these assumptions can lead to poor students doing worse in some classes because of teacher bias.  The culture a student comes from can very frequently put that student into categories in the eyes of a teacher.  

The different political opinions of students or even just opinions in general can often cause teachers to be biased for or against a particular student.  When it comes to political opinions in particular, teachers may like or dislike a student more based on whether they have the same or different views on politics.  (Strauss).  People cannot help but judge each other based on their respective political opinions.  This is because many people believe what they believe very strongly when it comes to politics.  When a teacher sees a student with a drastically different political opinion than them, the teacher can sometimes think that the student is less intelligent or less informed.  Teachers can also not help but like the student a little bit less.  This may eventually cause the student to do somewhat worse in the class because the teacher is a little bit biased against them.  It would most likely be an unintentional bias, but it would still have an effect on the student.  Also, if a student shares many of the same political opinions as the teacher, then that student will most likely have more of a shot at becoming one of the teacher’s favorites.  Therefore, the student will likely receive a grade that is better than what they should have gotten because of teacher bias and subconscious favoritism.  Teachers will often pick students as favorites who are more similar to them.  Lots of students who are not teacher favorites will end up at a disadvantage, because the favorite students will probably be unfairly given better scores.  This kind of thing is a majorly overlooked problem because grades have an extremely heavy impact on the future of students.  

The issue of teacher bias is hard to overcome, because most teachers are not only under the impression that they grade fairly, but are also under the impression that they are completely neutral and not biased.  The issue is not viewed as one of the important issues of the world because many people are not directly seeing the negative effects of it.  It is also very hard to prove which teachers are more biased than others.  This topic is not often talked about, and more people need to be made aware of it.  Many people do not realize the importance of the teacher bias, and the issue is extremely undervalued.  The effects are larger than most people realize, and many people agree that it has a drastic effect on the future of students.  Education is something that should be fair for everyone.  It should be very important that every student gets a fair chance to succeed.  If teacher bias continues to be as bad as it is now, then some brilliant minds out there may never get the chance to show their talents.  Some students who might have grown up to cure cancer or help the world in great ways may never end up doing so because of teachers being biased in their earlier years.  This is why it is very important to give every student an equal chance at succeeding in school.  If students are told their whole life that boys are better at math, then they may believe they are better or worse at math than they actually are.  If minority students continue to be discriminated against in the classroom, and continue to be made to believe that they will not succeed and are not as smart as white students, then there will be high dropout rates among these minority students for a long time to come.  If everyone is made more aware of these issues, then these stereotypes and issues will become less of a problem.

Students who feel like their teachers are biased against them rarely speak up, because they do not want to be seen as immature.  However, the truth is that teacher bias is happening a lot, and it has not gotten much better since the very beginning of school education systems.  Students who feel they are biased against need to speak out about it more so that others can be made aware.  Also, teachers need to accept the fact that they might be biased, and they should try to be fair to all students as much as they possibly can.  Teachers will often say that they are not biased, or that teacher bias is not a big deal, but they are definitely wrong.  Many students have claimed to be biased against in their classes, and many students have had their grades suffer because of teacher bias.  Some people claim that good students are going to make good grades anyway, no matter what teacher they get.  This, however, is very far from being true.  Even the best student can be largely negatively affected by teacher bias.  There have been many instances of teachers deliberately changing the grades of students that they do not like, so it can affect any student.  All students should care about this problem because all students have likely been affected by it.  

A possible way to reduce teacher bias is to get teachers to periodically attend sessions which would tell them and give them advice on how to stay neutral with all students.  Teachers need to be made aware of the issue because many of the instances of teacher bias are a subconscious thing, or the teachers may not realize they are being biased.  The education system of the United States is something that the country has been extremely proud of for a while, but it still definitely needs a lot of work.  Education is one of the most important factors which will determine humanity’s success, so it is extremely important that the education system is as neutral and fair to every student as possible.  This is why teachers must learn how to better treat students in their class completely neutral.  The issue of teacher bias in schools may be one that is impossible to completely fix, but humanity should at least be addressing the issue and doing what we can.  
