NYT’s the Upshot published an article earlier this week:

“How Elementary School Teachers’ Bias Can Discourage Girls from Math and Science”

Okay so at first, I read through this, and I was like: of course. Of course we have unconscious biases and those of elementary school teachers tend to line up with society’s.

But this study is actually kind of weird: it shows that:

“Beginning in 2002, the researchers studied three groups of Israeli students from sixth grade through the end of high school. The students were given two exams, one graded by outsiders who did not know their identities and another by teachers who knew their names.

In math, the girls outscored the boys in the exam graded anonymously, but the boys outscored the girls when graded by teachers who knew their names.”

So, huh? How do biases affect scores on math and science tests? There isn’t much interpretation involved in those answers. Also grouping 6th grade with elementary school is a stretch. I’ve requested media access to the article; hopefully I can find out.