In several European countries entry into secondary schools is based on a selection process whereby teachers together with other professionals and parents decide which track would be most suitable for the student. Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of a tracking system, the extent to which teachers are able to correctly identify students for orientation towards different tracks is not only important for the direct school choice, but may have long lasting effects in regards to future career pathways. Guidelines generally state that transition decisions are to be based on academic achievement, however research has shown other (non-performance related) variables to affect judgments, whereby students with an immigration background and-or lower socioeconomic status are underrepresented in the highest tracks. To this extent, research has shown that teachers’ judgments are affected by stereotype bias, although the link between bias and accuracy remains unclear, not in the least as it has proven difficult to develop adequate measures. The first step of our study was to define such criterion and test its predictive validity in regards to transition decisions. Second we applied the criterion to assess the accuracy of teachers’ transition decision and the extent to which decision accuracy was affected by bias. Results showed that the criterion, based on the likelihood of an observed achievement score pattern in relation to achievement score distributions in the different schooltracks for a large student cohort, was quite robust and could be considered a valid measure to which individual teacher judgment can be compared. Applying the criterion to test the accuracy of teachers’ decisions confirmed that teachers’ judgments vary as a result of the ethnic background of the students and that this stereotype bias indeed affects the accuracy of the decision. That is, stereotype bias negatively affects teachers’ decision accuracy, especially for ethnic minority students.

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