Measuring systematic gaps in teacher judgement: A new approach

We propose a new approach to test for systematic biases in teacher evaluations. We exploit a setting where teachers were required to assign students both grades and rankings within each grade. Comparing students immediately adjacent to grade boundaries, we apply a local randomization approach to estimate imbalance in student characteristics. Our findings reveal systematic bias favoring higher income and female students. These grading decisions carry real consequences: students just above the grade threshold are significantly more likely to attend university. Our approach can be applied whenever there is a system with many thresholds and subjective rankings.