Accountability as a moderator of teachers' tracking decisions: Two experimental studies

In some European countries, teachers select students for entry into different secondary school types on the basis of students’ achievement level. In Luxembourg, teachers join a council to select students. PISA provided evidence that students with immigration background and/or low socioeconomic status are underrepresented in the highest school track. The question arises whether teachers’ tracking decisions are biased towards non-performance-related cues. Dual process theories of judgment suggest accountability to be a moderator of judgment accuracy. Judgments of highly accountable teachers should be less biased through non-performance-related cues than those of teachers with low accountability. In groups, diffusion of responsibility may occur, thereby reducing accountability of the individual members. We designed two experiments to investigate whether teachers’ tracking decisions differ given different levels of accountability. In both studies, teachers in the high accountability condition did not rely on nonperformance- related cues. Increasing accountability for teachers’ decisions could reduce disadvantages of immigration and low SES students