CPR Seminar Series: ‘New Findings on Racial Bias in Teachers’ Assessments of Students’

Maria Zhu, assistant professor of economics and CPR senior research associate at Syracuse University, will present “New Findings on Racial Bias in Teachers’ Assessments of Students” as part of the CPR Seminar Series.

Abstract:

This paper assesses racial discrepancies in teachers’ assessments of student achievement, conditional on standardized test-based achievement. I find that addressing measurement error in standardized test scores is important in obtaining unbiased estimates of racial assessment gaps. After correcting for measurement error in standardized test scores, results indicate teachers assess Black students as being higher achieving than White students with the same standardized test-based achievement, which runs contrary to prior findings on Black-White teacher assessment gaps. Further analysis indicates these findings are consistent with i) standardized tests being negatively biased towards Black students and ii) teacher inflating assessments of Black students relative to White students due to social desirability bias.