Teachers marking work in alphabetical order could be inadvertently impacting their student’s career prospects – and not in a good way.
New research from the University of Michigan found that students who had surnames that came later in the alphabet received lower grades than those at the top of roll call.
They also found that these students tend to receive ruder comments on their work and have lower grading quality, measured by post-grade complaints from students.
Associate professor and first author Dr Jun Li said: ‘We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make the grading fair and accurate. But even for me it was really surprising.
‘It didn’t occur to us until we looked at the data and realised that sequence makes a difference.’
The study looked at more than 30 million grading scores through the popular grading software, Canvas, which gives student papers to teachers for grading in alphabetical order by default.
They found a clear pattern of decline in grading quality as teachers marked more assignments. Students whose surnames began with A, B, C, D, or E received a 0.3-point higher grade out of 100 possible points, compared to when they were graded randomly.
However, students with a surname lower down in the alphabet, from U-Z, received a 0.3-point lower grade, creating a 0.6-point gap.
And for a small group of graders when the alphabet was flipped, A-E students were worse off, while W-Z students received higher grades compared to what they would receive when graded randomly.
The 0.6-point gap may seem small, but it did affect students’ averages – and might even impact their future career paths.
The findings echo similar results from a 1970 study where researchers found that higher achievement was associated with students whose last names began with the letters toward the beginning of the alphabet – but not all of the results were statistically significant.
Study co-author Helen Wang said: ‘Our conclusion is this may be something that happened unconsciously by the graders that’s actually creating a real social impact.’
Can surnames influence your grades?
Research from the University of Cambridge reveals the mean GCSE scores of candidates with occupational surnames such as Baker or Cook were slightly lower than those with other surnames.
The average mean GCSE score for candidates with an occupational (non-status) surname was 5.16, but candidates whose surnames had neither occupational nor status origin had an average score of 5.25.
The findings were similar to the difference expected between candidates half a year apart in age, but smaller than the well-known ‘gap’ between male and female GCSE candidates.
The reason for the findings is unclear, but researchers suggest that teachers might get tired and irritable as they pass through the alphabet.
Jiaxin Pei, another co-author of the study, said: ‘We kind of suspect that fatigue is one of the major factors that is driving this effect.
‘When you’re working on something for a long period of time, you get tired and then you start to lose your attention and your cognitive abilities are dropping.’
Researchers say the option to grade the assignments in a random order does exist, but alphabetical mode is the default in Canvas and other online learning management systems.
They also suggest academic institutions could hire more graders for larger classes.
Dr Li added: ‘A college student emailed us afterward asking us to share the paper with him. He mentioned that his last name started with W. He’s going to tell his parents it’s not because of him it’s because of his last name.’
The study is under review by the journal Management Science.
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