Teacher judgment (in)accuracy: Differential relations with student progress in writing

•Students who received underestimated teacher judgments had slower writing progress.•Discrepant judgments related to progress more among majority ethnic students.•Marginalized students may form self-protective, external attributions against bias.•Discrepant judgments favoring majority ethnic groups may exacerbate achievement gap. Previous research demonstrates that teacher judgments tend to be systematically lower for ethnic minority students, even after controlling for standardized achievement results. However, the extent to which such discrepancies differentially relate to students’ learning and achievement is less explored. The current study analyzed data from 46 schools, 198 classrooms, and 2935 students in New Zealand to examine the association between teacher judgment inaccuracies and students’ subsequent progress in writing, in a context where teacher judgments were used as students’ final summative grade in school reports to parents and students. Results from hierarchical linear modelling showed that, overall, students who received teacher judgments that were higher than expected given their standardized achievement results, progressed faster the following year. The extent to which rate of progress was associated with discrepant teacher judgments was more pronounced for European students, than among students who were Indigenous Māori, Pacific, or of other ethnicities. These findings suggest that Indigenous and ethnic minority students may be more likely to form external (rather than internal) attributions in response to received teacher judgments that seem to be influenced by negative bias, potentially serving as a self-protective mechanism. Further, the resultant “boost” for European students may in fact contribute to the persistence of achievement inequities between different ethnic groups, particularly because positively biased teacher judgments are significantly more likely to occur for ethnic majority students.