Teacher bias or measurement error?

Abstract

Subjective teacher evaluations play a key role in shaping students' educational trajectories. Previous studies have shown that students of low socioeconomic status (SES) receive worse subjective evaluations than their high SES peers, even when they score similarly on objective standardized tests. This is often interpreted as evidence of teacher bias. Measurement error in test scores challenges this interpretation. We discuss how both classical and non-classical measurement error in test scores generate a biased coefficient of the conditional SES gap, and consider three empirical strategies to address this bias. Using administrative data from the Netherlands, where secondary school track recommendations are pivotal teacher judgments, we find that measurement error explains 35 to 43% of the conditional SES gap in track recommendations.