Teacher’s Pet: The Effect of Student Rank on Teacher Ability Beliefs

Abstract
This paper shows that teacher beliefs about a child's absolute academic ability are shaped by the child's relative classroom rank. I exploit an administrative database of Dutch primary school students' exam results and their teacher's contemporaneous decision of which secondary school track the student should follow. As tracks differ by academic standards, these decisions reveal teachers' beliefs about students' absolute ability. Teachers are sensitive to incidental student rank: independent of actual academic achievement, teachers are more likely to recommend the most (least) academically demanding track to students with a high (low) rank within their classroom. Consequently, better ranked students then attend more academically-intensive secondary schools tracks and are more likely to attend university. These findings are replicated using an alternative data source and econometric approach. The effect does not appear to be driven by differences in non-cognitive skills by rank.