The positive effects of higher grading standards on student math achievement

By Susan Davis, Johns Hopkins University

Do higher grading standards encourage better student performance, or do they discourage students instead? A study by American University’s Seth Gershenson and colleagues at SUNY and the Thomas Fordham Institute examined the effects of higher grading standards on student achievement in math. The authors applied data from the North Carolina Education Research Data Center to link report card grades to teacher-student pairings and student standardized test grades from 2006-2016, and focused on the students who took Algebra I in eighth or ninth grade during those years (n=365,004 students; 4445 Algebra I teachers). Teachers whose students had higher standardized test scores than other teachers’ students, yet had comparable report card grades, were classified as having higher grading standards.

Results showed that students who had teachers with higher grading standards demonstrated higher student achievement in Algebra I, and subsequently in Geometry and Algebra II. Authors also examined the possibility of higher grading standards discouraging students, or causing decreased effort and engagement, as evidenced in this study through attendance data. Results showed that students of teachers with higher grading standards had slightly better attendance than those of teachers with lower grading standards. Of further note was that the positive effects of higher grading standards on both student achievement and attendance were consistent among subgroups of students, including low-performing students.

The authors concluded by observing that their study findings, when coupled with the fact that low grading standards were found more often in schools serving low-SES communities, suggest that lower grading standards might contribute to the differences in student achievement often found between high- and low-SES communities.