Giving a Little Help to Girls? Evidence on Grade Discrimination and its Effect on Students' Achievement

Camille Terrier

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: This paper tests if gender-discrimination in grading affects pupils' achievements and course choices. I use a unique dataset containing grades given by teachers, scores obtained anonymously by pupils at different ages, and their course choice during high school. Based on double-differences, the identification of the gender bias in grades suggests that girls benefit from a substantive positive discrimination in math but not in French. This bias is not explained by girls' better behavior and only marginally by their lower initial achievement. I then use the heterogeneity in teachers' discriminatory behavior to show that classes in which teachers present a high degree of discrimination in favor of girls are also classes in which girls tend to progress significantly more than boys, during the school year but also during the next four years. Teachers' biases also increase the relative probability that girls attend a general high school and chose science courses.

Keywords: Gender; grading; discrimination; progress (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I24 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1341.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Giving a little help to girls? evidence on grade discrimination and its effect on students' achievement (2015)
Working Paper: Giving a Little Help to Girls? Evidence on Grade Discrimination and its Effect on Students Achievement (2014)
Working Paper: Giving a Little Help to Girls? Evidence on Grade Discrimination and its Effect on Students Achievement (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1341

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