Written by Ariana Loloachi | 09 November 2012

"Tying teacher pay, tenure and even employment status to standardized test scores corrupts the teacher-student relationship and inspires no one." (New York Times Brian Jones) I believe that what Jones has said here is correct. If students do not try their hardest, then the teachers have to pay for it, with their jobs. In the middle of all this are the students, which many of them, not putting in their maximum effort, are putting many teachers' jobs in jeopardy. Since student test scores have been tied to teacher's jobs, many teachers have been fired, and class sizes have gotten larger. Many students do not apply as much effort as they can when taking standardized tests, even though some do. For example, if one student aces a test, and the other bombs it, the score of the student who failed has the heaviest impact on the teacher. I find this to be extremely unfair, due to the amount of students who do not take school seriously.

Fall 2012, the teachers of the Chicago school district went on strike for better benefits and smaller class sizes. Capitalism, by definition, is a law of supply and demand. At the beginning of fall in Chicago, there is a huge demand for teachers at schools. When the teachers went on strike, the supply dwindled to almost nothing, causing the price for teachers to rise dramatically. Eventually, the teacher unions used the laws of capitalism to get what they wanted. So when everyone says capitalism is great, and it is used by the teacher unions in Chicago, how can one say that the strike in Chicago was not good?

All in all, I find this to be very unfair, making student scores tell whether a teacher gets fired or not. Even if the students tried their hardest on these tests, if they made simple errors or forgot the information it would still heavily impact teachers.