- Students with last names later in the alphabet receive lower grades
- Teachers May Get More Irritable The Further They Go Through the Alphabet
If you regularly received low grades in school, there’s good news: It may not have been a reflection of your intelligence.
Instead, a new study suggests his last name may have been to blame.
Researchers at the University of Michigan say students with last names that appear later in the alphabet receive lower grades.
What’s more, these students tend to receive ruder comments about their work, according to the researchers.
“This may be something that happened unconsciously to the students and is actually creating a real social impact,” said Helen Wang, co-author of the study.
If you regularly received low grades in school, there’s good news: It may not have been a reflection of your intelligence. Instead, a new study suggests his last name may have been to blame (file image)
In the study, the team analyzed more than 30 million transcripts of University of Michigan students.
Assignments were submitted through Canvas, the most widely used online learning management system in the world.
Importantly, Canvas sends these assignments to teachers for grading in alphabetical order by default.
The team’s analysis revealed a clear pattern of decline in grade quality as teachers evaluated more assignments.
Students whose last names began with A, B, C, D or E received a grade 0.3 points higher out of a possible 100 points, compared to when they were graded at random.
The reason for the findings is still unclear, although researchers suggest that teachers may become tired and more irritable the further they progress through the alphabet (file image).
In contrast, students whose last names began with letters later in the alphabet received a lower grade by 0.3 points.
While this 0.6-point difference may seem small, researchers say that over time, this disparity can affect students’ grade point averages and suggest it could even affect their future career paths.
The reason for the findings is still unclear, although researchers suggest that teachers may become tired and more irritable the further they progress through the alphabet.
“We suspect that fatigue is one of the main factors driving this effect,” said study co-author Jiaxin Pei.
“When you work on something for a long period of time, you get tired and then you start to lose attention and your cognitive abilities decline.”
Based on the findings, the researchers suggest that teachers should strive to grade assignments in a random order.
And for larger institutions, they say more raters should be hired to avoid grading fatigue.