Do teachers show bias when gauging student ability?

Do teachers show bias when gauging student ability?
 
New research from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands has analyzed teachers' opinions regarding the academic abilities of their students at the end of primary school to see whether these were accurate, inaccurate, or showed bias.
The research was based on a sample of 7,550 students in 500 classes in their final year of Dutch primary school (aged approximately 12 years). In the Netherlands, students are placed in various "tracks" when they start secondary school based on their scores on a standardized test at the end of primary school and their primary teacher's track recommendation. This study explored whether teachers' recommendations were fair reflections of students' previous performance.
 
The authors found that for more than 70% of the teachers, the average observed expectation did not differ significantly from the average expected expectation based on the performance records of the students in their classes. However, the differences among teachers in expectations for Turkish, Moroccan, and other ethnic-minority students with less-educated parents were larger than the average teacher expectation bias for these groups in the sample. Teacher expectation bias for demographic groups was found to be independent of the class population.
 
The authors found that the teachers in the sample had higher expectations for students in high-performing classes or classes with only a small proportion of students from underprivileged families.
 
Similar bias was found among UK teachers in  a study we featured in this newsletter in June.

Johns Hopkins University 

Research in Brief

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