Immigration and teacher bias towards students with an immigrant background.

This article examines how changes in the geographic concentration of immigrants affect teachers' assessments of immigrant students in Italian primary schools. Using data on fifth-grade students and an instrumental variable (IV) approach based on pre-existing immigrant settlement patterns, the study finds that an increasing share of immigrants in local labor markets leads teachers to assign lower grades to immigrant students compared to native peers with similar performance on blindly graded standardized tests. This bias is more pronounced in smaller communities, areas with lower educational attainment, and among older teachers, and it primarily affects second-generation immigrants, especially in language assessments. The findings are robust to various controls and fixed effects, and the study rules out differences in student behavior or skill composition as explanations, highlighting the role of local social climate and teacher stereotypes in shaping discriminatory grading practices.