Gender Gaps in Different Assessment Systems: The Role of Teacher Gender
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Catarina Angelo
and
Ana Balcão Reis
Abstract
Previous research that investigates the gender gap in student achievement has identified a gender gap in the difference between teacher grading and scores on national exams at the end of secondary school. In this paper we go a step further and look at how teacher characteristics may influence this gender gap. Our identification strategy takes advantage of a rich dataset that allows us to match each student with the respective teacher and contains information regarding scores obtained by each student from teacher grading, and in curriculum based national exams. Using fixed effects at the student level we find that exams are relatively more favorable for boys, regardless of the teacher gender or the gender matching. Results suggest that having a male teacher tends to increase the assessment gap for all students through a greater decrease from teacher to exam scores, the impact being less for boys.
Funding source: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Award Identifier / Grant number: PTDC/EGE-ECO/4764/2021
Award Identifier / Grant number: SFRH/BD/70215/2010
Award Identifier / Grant number: Social Sciences DataLab, PINFRA/22209/2016
Award Identifier / Grant number: UIDP/00124/2020
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Research funding: This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (PTDC/EGE-ECO/4764/2021; SFRH/BD/70215/2010) and Social Sciences DataLab (PINFRA/22209/2016; UIDP/00124/2020).
Variables definition.
| Students | |
|---|---|
| Age | Student’s age in the beginning of the school year the exam is taken (a student born in March 1994 and taking the 11th grade exam in 2011 begun the school year in September 2010. This student’s age is 16.5–16 years and 6 months). |
| Assessment gap | The difference between the teacher score and the exam score (teacher score – exam score). |
| Born in no-Portuguese speaking countries | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student was born in a no-Portuguese speaking country, and 0 otherwise. |
| Born in other Portuguese speaking countries | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student was not born in Portugal but in a Portuguese speaking country, and 0 otherwise. |
| Boy | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student is a boy and 0 if the student is a girl. |
| Computer at home | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student has access to a computer at home, and 0 otherwise. |
| Internal student | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student is an internal student. To be an internal student in a given subject, it must be the case that he/she attended classes in that school until the end of the school year for the subject on which he/she takes the national exam, and obtained a final score from teacher grading of at least 10 (on a scale of 1–20). |
| Internet at home | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student has access to internet at home, and 0 otherwise. |
| Portuguese born | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student was born in Portugal, and 0 otherwise. |
| Portuguese national | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student has Portuguese nationality, and 0 otherwise. |
| Social support beneficiary | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student benefits from social support, and 0 otherwise. |
| University | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student is using that exam to apply to university, and 0 otherwise. |
Variables definition (cont.).
| 9th grade exam score in Portuguese language | Grade obtained in the 9th grade national exam of Portuguese language, a mandatory exam for students taking the 9th grade (scores in a 0–100 scale). |
| 9th grade exam score in mathematics | Grade obtained in the 9th grade national exam of mathematics, a mandatory exam for students taking the 9th grade (scores in a 0–100 scale). |
| Parents | |
| Mother/Father education college | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student’s mother/father completed at least college education, and 0 otherwise. |
| Mother/Father education upper secondary | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student’s mother/father completed only upper secondary education, and 0 otherwise. |
| Mother/Father unemployed | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student’s mother/father is unemployed, and 0 otherwise. |
| Teachers | |
| Male teacher | Indicator variable equal to 1 if the student’s teacher is male and 0 if female. |
| Teacher’s age | Age of the teacher in the school year they assign the student the teacher’s grade we compare with the exam grade. |
| Teacher’s education | Highest level of certification obtained by the teacher. |
| Tenure | Number of years the teacher has been teaching in public schools. |
Heckman selection model – student/teacher gender effect on the assessment gap.
| Outcome equation | Selection equation | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subject | Grade | Observations | Lambda | Boy | Male | Interaction | Total | Boy | Male | Interaction | Total |
| Subject | teacher | effect | teacher | effect | |||||||
| (1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | (7) | (8) | (9) | (10) | (11) | (12) |
| Humanities | |||||||||||
| Geography | 11 | 129,720 | 2.35*** | −0.81*** | 0.25*** | −0.04 | −0.60*** | 0.04* | −0.02 | 0.13** | 0.15*** |
| (0.269) | (0.016) | (0.019) | (0.031) | (0.024) | (0.020) | (0.023) | (0.040) | (0.031) | |||
| History A | 12 | 93,399 | 1.19** | −0.61*** | 0.43*** | −0.08* | −0.27*** | −0.08*** | 0.05** | 0.07 | 0.04 |
| (0.442) | (0.026) | (0.024) | (0.043) | (0.033) | (0.021) | (0.022) | (0.037) | (0.028) | |||
| History of culture & arts | 11 | 20,278 | 0.48 | −0.12* | 0.42*** | −0.22* | 0.08 | 0.00 | 0.17*** | −0.22** | −0.05 |
| (0.860) | (0.058) | (0.058) | (0.100) | (0.072) | (0.042) | (0.045) | (0.071) | (0.051) | |||
| Philosophy | 11 | 53,199 | 0.80** | 0.07 | 0.18*** | −0.07 | 0.19** | −0.24*** | −0.01 | −0.06* | −0.31*** |
| (0.261) | (0.042) | (0.038) | (0.042) | (0.055) | (0.018) | (0.020) | (0.030) | (0.022) | |||
| Portuguese | 12 | 401,218 | 0.33 | 0.01 | 0.26*** | −0.04* | 0.23*** | −0.31*** | 0.07** | −0.00 | −0.24*** |
| (0.176) | (0.009) | (0.014) | (0.022) | (0.017) | (0.012) | (0.024) | (0.032) | (0.022) | |||
| Sciences | |||||||||||
| Biology & geology | 11 | 281,376 | −3.68*** | −0.24*** | 0.22*** | −0.08** | −0.11*** | −0.04** | 0.11*** | −0.02 | 0.05* |
| (0.302) | (0.016) | (0.023) | (0.035) | (0.026) | (0.014) | (0.023) | (0.033) | (0.024) | |||
| Descriptive geometry | 11 | 49,871 | 0.51 | −0.59*** | 0.66*** | −0.19** | −0.12** | −0.03 | 0.03 | 0.07 | 0.06* |
| (0.460) | (0.054) | (0.050) | (0.071) | (0.052) | (0.030) | (0.027) | (0.039) | (0.029) | |||
| Mathematics A | 12 | 293,052 | −1.48*** | −0.13 | 0.21*** | −0.11*** | 0.08*** | −0.17*** | 0.01 | 0.04** | −0.12*** |
| (0.114) | (0.014) | (0.017) | (0.025) | (0.018) | (0.009) | (0.012) | (0.017) | (0.012) | |||
| Mathematics applied to SS | 11 | 61,987 | 1.35*** | −0.38*** | 0.30*** | −0.18** | −0.26*** | −0.18*** | 0.08** | 0.03 | −0.08* |
| (0.264) | (0.033) | (0.034) | (0.061) | (0.048) | (0.020) | (0.025) | (0.040) | (0.031) | |||
| Physics & chemistry | 11 | 3,040,380 | −1.56*** | −0.27*** | 0.22*** | −0.11*** | −0.15*** | −0.11*** | 0.03* | 0.03 | −0.05*** |
| (0.089) | (0.011) | (0.015) | (0.021) | (0.015) | (0.009) | (0.014) | (0.019) | (0.013) | |||
| Other | |||||||||||
| Drawing | 12 | 28,939 | −4.86 | −0.47*** | 0.08 | 0.16 | −0.23* | −0.15 | 0.12 | 0.02 | −0.01 |
| (2.827) | (0.081) | (0.072) | (0.125) | (0.093) | (0.082) | (0.090) | (0.138) | (0.102) | |||
| Economics | 11 | 44,003 | −2.25*** | −0.40*** | 0.52*** | −0.15** | −0.04 | −0.06 | 0.20*** | −0.01 | 0.12* |
| (0.599) | (0.031) | (0.039) | (0.052) | (0.038) | (0.038) | (0.055) | (0.071) | (0.049) | |||
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The model includes year fixed effects and controls for student, family, and teacher characteristics. Standard errors in parentheses are clustered at the school level. Significance levels are ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.
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