Equitable grading practices are fair, consistent, and free from bias. However, they can be hard to achieve for a number of reasons, from grader fatigue to unconscious bias.
Grades – and the grading experience – shape student motivation, academic outcomes, and long-term opportunities. So it’s essential that educators apply equitable grading practices and refine their processes to rid them of all systemic sources of inequity.
In this article, we’ll explore how consistent and transparent assessment processes help reduce the risk of bias in grading, and how educators can implement research-informed strategies to promote fairness in grading.
Why consistency and transparency matter in grading
Equitable grading practices – those that are consistent and transparent – do more than assess a student’s academic performance. They support student engagement, motivation, confidence, and educational and career choices.
Research shows that unfair or inconsistent grading erodes student trust and undermines engagement, particularly in marginalized groups. In turn, this can directly influence high-stakes outcomes such as scholarships, university admissions, and job prospects (Lavy & Megalokonomou, 2024).
- Gender biases affect students' choice of field of study, particularly in STEM (Leckie & Maragkou, 2024)
- Grading practices have a measurable impact on young adult mental health (Linder, Nordin, Gerdtham, and Heckley, 2022)
- Well-designed grading policies may mitigate bias (Quinn, 2020)
With so much at stake, it’s essential that educators do everything they can to ensure equitable and accurate assessment , and fair practices for all students .
The risk of bias in assessment
Most educators take pride in their commitment to fairness and equitable treatment of students. So it can be challenging to recognize the risk of bias in your professional practice.
Even when educators consciously believe in fairness and equity, unknown attitudes can unintentionally influence how student work is graded.
Research shows that names associated with particular genders, ethnicities, or cultures can trigger unconscious assumptions, influencing how work is perceived and graded.
Biased grading also manifests through processes that inadvertently favor some students over others. From team grading and differences in grader scoring, to inconsistent application of grading criteria, the structure and process of grading itself can lead to disparities.
Implicit bias in education
Gender bias
Research indicates persistent gender biases in grading, particularly favoring boys in math and science while disadvantaging girls. These biases influence high school performance, university admissions, and career choices (Lavy & Megalokonomou, 2024).
Racial and ethnic bias
Studies reveal that racial stereotypes and teacher bias influence grading practices. For example, Black students often receive lower grades compared to White students for identical work (Tyner, 2020). Furthermore, some teachers grade students with migrant backgrounds less favorably than their peers (Bonefeld and Dickhauser, 2018) or overestimate students with non-migrant backgrounds (Tobisch and Dresel, 2017).
Confirmation bias and halo effect
Teacher bias isn’t limited to undergrading. A positive impression of a student can also unintentionally influence how current work is assessed. Perceiving students to be well-behaved or more affluent (Ibid), for example, can lead to over-scoring that doesn’t reflect the quality of the work itself.
Systemic bias in education
Team grading challenges
When multiple instructors or teaching assistants are involved in grading, different applications of grading rubrics can result in inconsistent scoring. Without oversight and control, students may receive different grades for similar work, depending on the grader.
First and last submission bias
Grading order can unintentionally impact outcomes. Early submissions may receive more lenient scores while later ones may be assessed more critically due to grader fatigue or shifting expectations.
Changes to grading criteria mid-process
Modifying rubrics or assessment criteria during grading can introduce inequity, especially if early submissions were evaluated by a different standard than later ones. This undermines consistency and can disadvantage students through no fault of their own.
Severity or leniency bias
Some graders may consistently score more harshly or generously than others, particularly without a shared rubric or norming process. This undermines fairness, especially in team-taught classes.
Six strategies for consistent grading in higher education
With these risks of bias assessment in mind, let’s look at some best practices for equitable grading.
1. Anonymizing grading
Anonymized grading is an effective way to reduce the impact of implicit bias in assessment processes (Yale Poorvu Centre for Teaching and Grading). When student names and other identifiers are removed, unconscious associations related to gender, race, background, or past performance are less likely to affect judgment – for example, grade inflation for better-behaved students (Ferman and Fontes, 2020).
2. Applying rubrics for transparency and consistency
Well-designed rubrics
are key for transparent evaluation of students’ work (Olson and Krysiak, 2021). By standardizing assessment criteria, rubrics reduce the risk of inconsistent grading between team members and of personal judgment affecting grading, which in turn reduces racial and gender bias (Quinn, 2020). It’s essential – however – that these rubrics aren’t changed during the grading process.
3. Grading one question at a time
Grading responses to the same question across all students at once – known as horizontal grading – reduces the impact of fatigue or bias. It helps eliminate discrepancies that might arise when grading by submission order, making grading more objective and consistent. Plus, by grading one question at a time – instead of one student at a time – the risk of implicit bias is reduced.
4. Using formative assessment and Standards-Based Grading
Robert Marzano champions grading to support learning, not just measure it – championing Standards-Based Grading and formative assessment . SBG focuses on how well students learn specific skills and meet clear learning goals, rather than simply attaining alpha or numerical grades. Paired with regular low-stakes formative assessment, it supports subject mastery rather than ‘grade chasing’.
5. Offering differentiated assessment types
Different students learn in different ways. Differentiated assessment types allow all students to show mastery in their preferred way. For example, allowing students to choose between projects, presentations, or traditional tests (Reeves, 2024). This respects student diversity and can support enhanced agency and self-regulation of learning (University of Illinois Chicago), boosting outcomes.
6. Reducing bias in grading with technology
The human element of assessment can be its biggest strength and weakness. Feedback from tutors can help students identify areas of improvement and boost attainment. But intrinsic bias, fatigue, and variability can undermine grading equity. Using grading technology mitigates the risk of systemic and human bias – with tools to ensure more consistent grading – while freeing up tutors to deliver more meaningful support to students.
Support equitable grading practices with Gradescope
Technology can play a crucial role in promoting equitable grading practices by ensuring consistency, transparency, and fairness.
By removing opportunities for bias and standardizing grading procedures, tools like Gradescope help educators reduce the risk of grading inequities, especially in large classes or team-based grading environments.
Gradescope offers several features designed to support fair and consistent grading.
Lockable rubrics
Gradescope’s newest feature gives educators the confidence that the criteria they set will be consistently applied by all members of their grading team. By locking a rubric once it is set, which means it can’t be changed midway through the grading process, educators remove the risk of shifting expectations after students have submitted their work.
This is particularly important in large courses with multiple graders, including TAs who could be new to grading. In those settings, even well-meaning edits to a rubric can introduce bias or lead to uneven evaluation across submissions.
By preventing mid-process changes, lockable rubrics offer a range of benefits:
- Increased grading consistency: Prevents different graders from interpreting or applying changing criteria, helping ensure students are scored against the same standard.
- Reduced grading errors: Eliminates the risk of accidental or unauthorized rubric changes that could affect student outcomes.
- Improved grading efficiency: Removes the need to revisit previously graded submissions due to mid-process rubric edits, saving valuable time.
- Greater student trust and satisfaction: Prevents the confusion and frustration that can arise when different grading standards are applied midstream.
- Better quality assurance and integrity: Helps instructors uphold high academic standards and avoid bias by locking in fair, transparent evaluation criteria from the outset.
- More peace of mind for faculty: Minimizes uncertainty and stress, especially in team-based grading environments, by protecting the rubric educators originally intended.
Gradescope’s lockable rubric feature helps ensure students receive the fairest, most accurate scoring and feedback, just as their instructor intended.
Anonymous grading
By concealing student identities during the grading process, unconscious bias is reduced, ensuring all students are graded fairly. After the grading window closes and students have access to their grades, anonymous grading can be turned off in Gradescope, allowing educators to track individual student performance and progress for that assignment.
Horizontal grading
Gradescope allows graders to grade responses to the same question at once, improving grade consistency. Graders can view multiple student answers at one time to better compare and evaluate student performance. It can help graders calibrate their scoring and be more consistent, reducing the risk of bias due to grading order.
AI-assisted answer grouping
Educators can adopt Gradescope’s AI-assisted answer grouping to organize and group student responses based on content similarity. This makes grading more consistent in terms of content quality and ensures that the same type of answer is judged by the same criteria. It can also help with workload management by automatically categorizing responses for efficient review.
What’s next for fair assessment?
Grading has a lifelong impact on student outcomes – it needs to be fair, or risk reinforcing ingrained societal inequalities. As educators, you can challenge structural and personal biases. As technology providers, we’re proud to provide the solutions to do it.