Economics of Education Review 18 1999 89–105
The variation in teachers’ grading practices: causes and consequences
Hans Bonesrønning
Department of Economics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N-7055, Dragvoll, Norway Received 1 January 1997; accepted 8 January 1998
Abstract
The teachers’ grading practices vary a lot between the upper secondary schools in Norway. This paper discusses the causes and the consequences. The point of departure is the model laid out by Correa and Gruver 1987, which incorpor-
ates grades as a policy instrument for the teacher who tries to manipulate the students’ studying time. However, in the Norwegian institutional setting students have incentives to press for easy grading. We therefore introduce an alternative
grading model with rent seeking students, that is, students who allocate time to affect the teachers’ grading. We then provide empirical evidence that the teachers’ grading is systematically associated with teacher characteristics, and
discuss whether this is consistent with the Correa and Gruver’s model, the alternative model or both. Thereafter the consequences of teachers’ grading for student achievement is investigated empirically. Our tentative interpretation of the
results is that hard grading improves student achievement. [JEL I21].
1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
This paper provides empirical evidence that teachers’ grading practices vary substantially between upper sec-
ondary schools in Norway, and it sets out to investigate the causes and the consequences. The focus is on the
potential incentive effects of teachers’ grading. The main hypothesis to be investigated is whether student achieve-
ment is affected by the ways teachers reward students during the learning process. This is an important issue
related to the current debate whether incentives-oriented school reforms will succeed or not.
The understanding of the incentives currently in place in schools may in fact be a necessary prerequisite for
successful school reforms. Hoenack 1994 states that economists have underemphasized these topics in their
analysis of education, and moreover, that very little attention has been given by academics to the question of
incentives on students. We therefore expect the marginal returns to investigations of the students’ current incen-
tives to be rather large.
E-mail: hans.bonesronningsv.ntnu.no
0272-775798 - see front matter
1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 2 7 2 - 7 7 5 7 9 8 0 0 0 1 2 - 0
Our point of departure is the student-teacher interac- tion model set out by Correa and Gruver 1987. This
model applies the assumption that students care about perceived
achievement, defined as the product of real achievement and a teacher’s grading parameter. The
grading parameter is a potential control variable for the teacher trying to manipulate students, because it affects
the opportunity cost of the time students allocate to other activities than education. The effect of a change in teach-
er’s grading on a student’s allocation of time cannot be determined — unless rather strong assumptions are made
about student preferences and the teaching technology. Montmarquette and Mahseredjian 1989 apply the Cor-
rea and Gruver’s model for a sample of Canadian pri- mary school pupils and provide evidence that hard grad-
ing, i.e. grades set below the real achievement level, deterioriates the standardized test results for French lang-
uage.
1
In the work reported here we apply the same
1
Farkas and Hotchkiss 1989 discuss many of the issues raised in the work reported here, but their discussion is not
within the framework provided by Correa and Gruver.
90 H. Bonesrønning Economics of Education Review 18 1999 89–105
model for a sample of Norwegian upper secondary school students, and by separating between income and
substitution effects, we find that hard grading 5 the income effect has positive effects on student achieve-
ment. There are several reasons why these results should not be regarded as definitive.
First, an assumption applied by Correa and Gruver — and by us in the empirical work reported above — is
that students passively accept the teachers’ grading. This assumption is restrictive. It seems more? likely that the
students recognize that they can improve perceived achievement by allocating time to influence teacher grad-
ing practices. We augment the Correa and Gruver’s model with rent seeking students, and show theoretically
that when students put pressure on teachers for easy grading, the relationship between grading and student
achievement will be mediated through the students’ time constraints.
The crucial question then is which of the two models outlined above we should repose most confidence in.
This is an empirical question: We find that teachers’ grading is systematically associated with teacher charac-
teristics and discuss whether this finding is consistent with the Correa and Gruver’s model, the alternative
model, or both. It turns out that none of the models can be excluded on the basis of this discussion. Thereafter,
we investigate which theory provides a superior expla- nation in a formal statistical sense. We find no support
for the rent seeking hypothesis, which imply that the conceptualization of grading as a teacher’s instrument
seems appropriate.
Second, it turns out that the effects of teachers’ grad- ing cannot be empirically revealed unless relevant mea-
sures of teacher heterogeneity are included. Montmar- quette and Mahseredjian 1989 present an illustrative
discussion of the problems of separating between teach- ing quality and grading effects when teacher character-
istics correlate poorly with student achievement. Now, teacher heterogeneity represents the achilles heel of edu-
cation production function studies. It is well known that student achievement adjusted for student traits, varies a
lot across teachers, but that purchased teacher character- istics education, experience cannot explain much of the
variation in student achievement. To deal with this prob- lem this paper utilizes the teachers’ own exam results
from the universities as an additional measure of teacher heterogeneity. Fortunately, the teachers’ own exam
results turns out to be an important determinant of teacher effectiveness.
Third, student self-selection might obfuscate the true relationships. After one year, the students in the upper
secondary school are sorted into mathematics, social studies or foreign language by interaction between a
selection criterion which is the probability of getting admission to the university and an underlying distri-
bution of abilities and preferences. An example is that students who respond to hard grading by increasing their
studying time, may find that their probabilities of getting admission to the university increases when the grading
gets harder. Students with preferences for hard grading may consequently sort themselves into the subjects with
the hardest grading. We investigate whether the teachers’ grading practices affect the students’ specialization
choices, and subsequently, we make the appropriate con- trols for selectivity bias while estimating the education
production functions.
The paper is organized as follows. The model is laid out in Section 2. Section 3 provides empirical specifi-
cations. In Section 4 data and results are presented, while concluding remarks are offered in Section 5.
2. The Model
