Editorial: Anonymous Grading


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One issue within Schreiber is whether teachers should know whose test or paper they are grading.  Many students feel that some teachers may unknowingly exhibit bias while grading assignments.  This can be even more common if some teachers have a specific opinion of some of their students or a favorite within a class.  Bias can be even more prevalent in this specific situation.

Some students feel that in english or social studies, a teacher’s opinion can influence their final grade due to the subjectivity of the subjects.  These two subjects contain many written assignments or essays where a teacher decides the grade using their own personal judgement.

A small fix to this issue is to have a rubric to grade each assignment.  Although this may help resolve the issue some extent, the teacher can still unfairly fill out the rubric if they know whose paper it is.  This is in comparison to a math or science class where there is one definitive answer to each question and cannot be argued.

To fix this, some suggest that students should use their student ID as a code and put it on top of their paper instead of their name.  This is a possible solution, however, someone’s ID number is available to their peers or anyone in the building.

Another possible solution is that students could create a random code name or number and use that instead of their name.  This is a very efficient solution until multiple students forget what they wrote and it is impossible to figure out whose test is whose.

An even more efficient solution would to be to give each student a number before each test.  Then the student would write this number on their test, and the teacher would not know whose test it is when they are grading it.

There would then be a master list that the subject chairperson would have in the event of someone forgetting their number.  After each test, the number for each student could be switched to keep each student’s identity a secret.

The Schreiber Times believes that the administration should attempt to resolve this issue.  Although this problem is undiscussed, it is something that Schreiber’s administration should consider to prevent bias from entering the grading of tests and papers. It is vital for this situation to be addressed because it can greatly affect a student’s grade.