Imagine a student is faced with writing an answer to a prompt, and they bring up ideas that their teacher would never even have thought of, and they write a well-written, accurate response to the question.

      But then they get their grade back. It’s not what they were hoping for. They get a worse grade because the points they brought up didn’t align with their teachers’ views. This happens to many students all the time as a result of bias.

      Bias occurs all the time, and this is not the only form of bias that teachers display to their students. According to learninga-z.com, “In general, teacher bias, also known as educational bias, refers to prejudice against certain groups on the basis of age, gender, race, sexual orientation, or economic standing that causes educators to treat their students unfairly.”

      According to an experiment done by marcolearning.com, “researchers had classroom teachers, as well as external teachers, grade the same set of math tests completed by both girls and boys; they found that classroom teachers systematically gave their female students lower grades than the external teachers did. 

     The only difference between the classroom teachers and the external teachers was that the external teachers graded blindly with respect to gender.” The article continues to state, “It’s an unconscious bias that caused them to treat their female students unfairly when it came to math and science—perhaps the same way their own teachers treated them.”

     “When we act based on overgeneralized social stereotypes (most of the time without realizing it), this is implicit bias. The gap in thinking caused when our brain tries to categorize or generalize can have significant impacts on our personal teaching practice and on our learners,” says greenteacher.com.

      When teachers are acting with any kind of discrimination, it causes students to be afraid to express their opinions and write their essays based on their teachers beliefs. It could even cause them to try to reach the standards of other students, only to be shot down because their answers could have differed from what the teacher wanted from them. 

     Educators, don’t subject your students to bias; grade fairly, and allow them to express themselves without fear.