Teachers don't usually pick on struggling students; they actually give them 'mercy grades' to try and even the playing field.
March 25, 2026
Original Paper
Compensatory Experience-based Discrimination: Behavioral Evidence from Danish School Registries
SocArXiv · 5zm87_v2
The Takeaway
While many assume teachers harbor negative biases against underperforming groups, this study of Danish school registries found a 'compensatory bias.' Teachers who saw specific groups struggling in their classrooms responded by grading those students more leniently than their peers to help bridge the gap.
From the abstract
Are school teachers biased when grading students from certain groups? And if so, what is the direction of bias, and how can variation across teachers be explained? We develop an account of compensatory experience-based biases driven by a desire for grade equality and beliefs about the academic abilities of students from certain groups stemming from concrete classroom experiences. Based on large-scale longitudinal administrative data on Danish lower secondary teachers and their students, we find