Gender Bias in teachers’ grading: What is in the grade

Abstract

It is a common empirical finding across countries that, on average, girls outperform boys in languages, whereas boys outperform girls in mathematics. We enrich the existing empirical evidence by combining admission test scores and teachers’ grading of 15-year-old pupils’ performance in mathematics and their native language in the Czech Republic, and furthermore, we investigate possible gender bias in teachers’ grading. The directions of the gender differences in performance we estimate are consistent with international patterns and we document that teachers’ grading is biased in favor of girls both in mathematics and in native language. The gender effect in grading is sizeable across the whole performance distribution and can be explained neither by the students’ differing perceptions of stress at exams, nor by the students’ attitudes toward the subject in question. The most plausible explanation is that the gender grading gap is due to gender difference in non-cognitive skills, such as in-class behavior and homework, confounding teachers’ grades but not test scores. Since grades constitute the main feedback about students' academic performance and a crucial factor in decision-making about their future academic careers, biased grading may cause inefficiencies to the educational system and consequently can negatively affect future labor market careers.