Do High Grading Standards Affect Student Performance?

20 This paper explores the effects of high grading standards on student test performance in 21 elementary school. While high standards have been advocated by policy-makers, business 22 groups, and teacher unions, very little is known about their effects on outcomes. Most of the 23 existing research on standards is theoretical, generally finding that standards have mixed 24 effects on students. However, very little empirical work has to date been completed on this 25 topic. This paper provides the first empirical evidence on the effects of grading standards, 26 measured at the teacher level. Using an exceptionally rich set of data including every third, 27 fourth, and fifth grader in a large school district over four years, we match students’ test 28 score gains and disciplinary problems to teacher-level grading standards. In models in 29 which we control for student-level fixed effects, we find substantial evidence that higher 30 grading standards benefit students, and that the magnitudes of these effects depend on the 31 match between the student and the classroom. While dynamic selection and mean reversion 32 complicate the estimated effects of grading standards, they tend to lead to understated 33 effects of standards. 34  2003 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.