Bias or Behavior? Using Differences Between Teacher Reports and Administrative Records to Identify Bias in Teacher Perceptions of Student Behavior

Non-cognitive skills contribute to both academic and labor market success. In the classroom, teachers often rely on their assessments of students’ non-cognitive abilities when evaluating overall student performance and when recommending students for advanced or remedial class placement. Given the potential impact on long-term student outcomes, it is important to identify any biases in these perceptions that could disadvantage subgroups of students. In this paper, I estimate demographic subgroup differences in teacher reports of student absenteeism while controlling for administrative records of actual absences. I find evidence that teachers report low-income students as being more absent than their more affluent peers even when they have the same number of recorded absences. Math teachers express a bias in favor of males. I find mixed evidence with regard to student race and ethnicity.