Improving Teachers’ Judgments: Accountability Affects Teachers’ Tracking Decision

Abstract

In some European countries, teachers select students for entry into different secondary school tracks on the basis of students’ achievement level. In Luxembourg, teachers join a council to select students. PISA provided evidence that students with an immigration background and/or low socioeconomic status are underrepresented in the highest school track. The question arises whether teachers’ tracking decisions are biased towards non-performance related cues. Dual process theories of judgment formation suggest accountability to be a moderator of judgment accuracy. Judgments of highly accountable teachers should be less biased by non-performance related cues than those of teachers with low accountability. In groups such as the teacher councils, diffusion of responsibility may occur, thereby reducing accountability of the individual group members. We designed two experiments to investigate whether teachers’ tracking decisions differ under different levels of accountability. In both studies, teachers in the high accountability condition did rely solely on performance related cues. Increasing accountability for teachers’ decisions could reduce biases in tracking decisions for students with immigration background and low socioeconomic status.