As an experiment, more than 1,500 teachers were given a piece of writing from an imaginary 2nd grader. Both of the papers were identical鈥攆ull of large print and youthful misspellings鈥攖he only difference was that one piece of writing made reference to a brother named 鈥淒ashawn,鈥� and the other talked about his brother 鈥淐onnor.鈥� The name choices come from a list of racially distinctive names; Connor is more likely to refer to a white child, while Dashawn is more likely to be the name of a Black child.
About 35 percent of teachers judged the 鈥淐onnor鈥� paper as being at or above grade level, compared with nearly 31 percent of those who gave the 鈥淒ashawn鈥� paper the same marks. David M. Quinn, an assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California, suggests that teachers were influenced by the subtle signals within the paper that one child was Black and the other white.
But when teachers were given a grading rubric鈥攁 set of performance criteria to use in evaluating the student writing鈥攖hat disparity disappeared. About 37 percent of teachers said that the writing samples met the guidelines intended to measure how well the imaginary student was able to recount an event.
Giving teachers a set of specific criteria in order to judge a child鈥檚 work, rather than forcing them to rely on a possibly more vague sense of grade-level performance, could be a useful tool in reducing the impact of racial bias, said Quinn, in published Nov. 2. Quinn鈥檚 research was also published in the journal in June.
The differences in grading were driven primarily by white teachers and by female teachers; minority teachers and male teachers did not show the same grading disparities in this research, Quinn said. And, the disparities showed up regardless of a teacher鈥檚 implicit or explicit bias, as measured by another part of the evaluation. That could be because the sample size for the experiment was too small to tease out real differences among teachers, or because implicit bias testing may not be a valid measure of individual attitudes, Quinn wrote.
It鈥檚 important to note that this study couldn鈥檛 measure how generalizable these results would be, Quinn said. Teachers may feel differently towards students they know, rather than the imaginary students in this experiment. Also, the impact of rubrics may be different depending on the subject matter and the assignment being graded.
But the findings offer a 鈥減roof of concept鈥� that grading guidelines may be helpful, Quinn said. 鈥淩ubrics will not be the only answer, but may have a role to play in broader-based racial equity efforts. Regardless, all teachers should be reflective and honest about potential implicit or explicit stereotypes they hold, and should actively work to overcome them.鈥�
Images of writing by David M. Quinn
Ruler image by Getty