Correcting for Implicit Bias in Grading

Fair, accurate grading is important because students, parents, college admissions, and employers see grades as a reflection of a student’s capability. Students’ grades impact their future.

The teachers Black students need are mindful of their biases and how their biases impact their professional practice, including how they assign grades. Biases are anchored in beliefs about race, gender, sexual orientation, or other criteria, and, unfortunately, grading bias disproportionately affects Black students negatively (Tyner, 2020). Teachers unaware of their biases sometimes give grades based on criteria unrelated to students’ mastery of learning targets or academic standards. There is a body of research that supports this unfortunate reality for Black students.

In one study, educators were asked to grade papers of anonymous, fictitious second-grade students (Quinn, 2020). The assignments were identical in every way, except a sibling’s name, Connor or Deshawn. Researchers found that White women teachers – 79 percent of the US teacher workforce – who graded the work of “Deshawn’s” brother were significantly less likely to grade the assignment as “on grade level” (Will, 2020). Teachers of color and male teachers did not exhibit the same bias.

To reduce grading bias, use rubrics and anonymous grading when you can. Have students write their names on the last page of papers, exams, and quizzes. Also, some learning management systems like Canvas and Blackboard have anonymous grading options. It might be prudent to use them to prevent grading bias.

Be Aware of Behavioral Grading Bias

Grading biases impact not only academic grades but also citizenship grades. Research shows that African-American students often receive lower citizenship grades than their White peers, especially in classrooms taught by White teachers (Tyner, 2020). The root of this phenomenon lies in the implicit biases that affect teachers’ assessments of what Black students know and are capable of achieving.

Track your interactions with your students for a month with a clipboard (Wamsted, 2021). Track which students you discipline, whose raised hands you call on, who you cold call, and which students you joke with and ask about their interests outside of the classroom.

If you discover that you interact with your Black students inequitably compared to your other students, you have a starting point to work on. You now have a list of students who you can make a point to have conversations with, call on when they raise their hands, question whether you need to discipline them so severely or at all, and question whether you’re giving them fair citizenship and academic grades when reviewing their behavior and work.

Equity in grading matters. Equitable grading practices lead to better student-teacher relationships, reduced failure rates, less stressful classrooms, and grades more correlated to the level of students mastery of standards (Feldman, 2020).

Ensure Grades Reflect What Students Know and Can Do

Grades should reflect what students understand (I am uncertain that grades reflect understanding. Actually, I think that is the problem–grades only reflect “mastery” and/or regurgitation of specific information. What I understand about the Civil War, for example, and what I am able to answer on an assessment are likely quite divergent) and their progress toward mastering standards. Grades should not be based on superfluous criteria.

Because grades communicate students’ understanding, they should be used as a teaching tool, not punitive discipline, which disproportionately affects Black students (Winterman, 2021). Attendance, behavior, or forgetting to write a name on an assignment shouldn’t affect students’ grades.

Similarly, students’ grades shouldn’t be inflated. Sometimes, teachers worry about how many Ds or Fs they give students on their report cards, particularly when their schools monitor D and F rates. Still, inflating students' grades does no favors for students and contributes to achievement gaps.

Give Students Helpful, High-Quality Feedback

Feedback should be one step in a learning process that provides students direction to improve their academic performance, not a culminating activity or final step. Feedback on grades and formative assessments is a teaching tool. Because it’s a teaching tool, it’s important to use grading rubrics that clearly outline your expectations and grading criteria for each assignment so that students know what they need to do to achieve mastery.

How you give feedback to students is important, too. To ensure your students hear your feedback and find it helpful, give corrective feedback – feedback that is objective, timely, specific, supportive, and actionable (Corrective Feedback |WingInstitute.org, n.d.).

Ensure your feedback points to specific examples of what a student did well and what they need to work on in relation to your grading rubric, and then provide specific suggestions on how they can improve their performance.

It’s also important to praise specific behaviors in your feedback. Praise is powerful and positively impacts students’ self-worth. Don’t just write “great job” on assignments, leaving students wondering what was “great” about their work. Instead, highlight specific things that your students did well and why it was done well.

When you do that you’re building trust and communicating to your students that you believe they are capable of reaching your high expectations. Unfortunately, that’s not a common experience for Black students. It’s common for Black students to be made to feel less capable than their White peers and to be told by counselors and teachers to not set their expectations too high.

When you communicate your high expectations to students, their self-awareness and efficacy increases, they set higher goals, and they have better academic outcomes (National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments).

Make Your Classroom an Academically and Psychologically Safe Space

The majority of high-achieving students feel stressed about grades. A Stanford University study revealed that about 75 percent of high-achieving high school students felt stressed about their school work and worried about taking tests and quizzes (Feldman, 2020). That pressure to get good grades contributes to anxiety, poor sleep, and even self-harm for some students. That’s why it’s important to build classroom cultures where your students feel comfortable taking academic risks, including getting, giving, and making sense of feedback.

To create a safe classroom culture where giving and receiving feedback is the norm, it’s important to establish relationships with your students defined by care, kindness, and psychological safety. Ensuring Black students can see themselves represented in the classroom and learning materials is one way to create academic and psychological safety in your classroom. Correctly pronouncing your Black students’ names, incorporating their interests into assignments, and embracing the natural intersections between race and learning standards are other ways to create a classroom culture where your Black students feel safe to take academic risks.

In order to have an effective feedback culture, students also need to feel safe making mistakes publicly. Sharing your mistakes is a great way to show that mistakes are okay and that even teachers don’t get everything right.

The Teachers Black Students Need by Zachary Scott Robbins. © 2025 Routledge/Taylor & Francis Inc. Reproduced with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.