Factors influencing teachers’ grading standards in mathematics

Abstract

National assessments can be used to explore the strictness of teachers in grading students by comparing student grades to their scores on standardised tests. Several factors influence teacher-given grades, including student gender, school type, geographical regions, and socioeconomic status. In this paper, we used data from the Italian institute INVALSI, responsible for the organisation of national mathematics assessments, to investigate how these factors influence teachers’ grading standards. We considered a sample of 36,589 Grade 13 Italian students from 2,062 classes at 990 high schools. The relationships between the variables were analysed using hierarchical linear modelling. The findings reveal that teacher-given grades are related to student-level variables (e.g. gender, socioeconomic status, and score on the INVALSI test) and school-level variables (e.g. school type and location). When the difference between teacher-assigned grades and scores on the INVALSI test was considered, only student gender, school type, and location accounted for the gap in student achievements. Therefore, student socioeconomic status has a lower influence on their performance on the INVALSI test, suggesting that using standardised assessments might improve equity in assessment.