On the 17th May Julia Bredtmann (RWI - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research) will present the study on "Discrimination in grading? Evidence on teachers' evaluation bias towards minority students".
Free admission.
Abstract:
We analyze whether teachers discriminate against minority students in terms of grading. Based on comprehensive data on students in German primary and secondary schools, we compare students' scores in standardized, anonymized achievement tests with non-anonymous teacher assessments within a difference-in-differences framework. We find that minority students receive lower grades in both German and Math than majority students. However, these differences are not due to discrimination in grading against minority students. Instead, we find that performance gaps between minority and majority students are significantly reduced when being graded by the teacher compared to being assessed through the anonymized test. This result holds for different groups of minority students. Our findings thus reveal that, if anything, teachers have a positive evaluation bias towards minority students.