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Does increased teacher accountability decrease leniency in grading?

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  • Puhani, Patrick A.
  • Yang, Philip

Abstract

Because accountability may improve the comparability that is compromised by lenient grading, we compare exit exam outcomes in the same schools before and after a policy change that increased teacher accountability by anchoring grading scales. In particular, using a large administrative dataset of 364,445 exit exam outcomes for 72,889 students, we assess the effect of introducing centralized scoring standards into schools with higher and lower quality peer groups. We find that implementation of these standards increases scoring differences between the two school types by about 25 percent.

Suggested Citation

  • Puhani, Patrick A. & Yang, Philip, 2019. "Does increased teacher accountability decrease leniency in grading?," Economics Working Paper Series 1914, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
  • Handle: RePEc:usg:econwp:2019:14
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    File URL: http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/econwp/EWP-1914.pdf
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    Cited by:

    1. Lang, Matthias, 2019. "Communicating subjective evaluations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 163-199.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Education; gender; identification; fixed effects; teacher quality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • J78 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Public Policy (including comparable worth)

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