Gabrielle Fack discussion of: Teacher bias

Abstract

The recent large flows of refugees from Ukraine in European countries, and in particular, the arrival of many children fleeing their homes since the Russian invasion stress again the key role that school systems play in the integration of migrants. It is therefore important to understand how school teachers interact with students of migrant origins, in order to detect potential biases and develop policies to address them. This paper tackles this question by studying how the local immigration context affects teacher’s attitudes towards children of foreign origin, using data from Italy. More precisely, the paper shows that, in areas that experience an increase in the immigrant share in the local population, grades given by teachers for an oral non-blind test to children of foreign origin are on average lower than grades given to natives, even after controlling for student’s grades in blind tests. The paper also shows that the effects are larger in smaller cities and for older teachers. Moreover, the effect seems to be driven by areas where negative sentiment towards immigrants is on average higher.