Elen M. Yusupova, research assistant, Center for Psychometrics and Educational Measurements, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: eabdurakhmanova@hse.ru (сorresponding author) 

Anastasia V. Kapuza, research fellow, International Laboratory for Evaluation of Practices and Innovations in Education, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: akapuza@hse.ru 

Elena Yu. Kardanova, Candidate of Science in Physics and Mathematics, associate professor, director, Center for Psychometrics and Educational Measurement, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. E-mail: ekardanova@hse.ru 

Address: 16 Potapovsky Lane, bldg. 10, 101000 Moscow, Russian Federation. 

Teachers’ expectations may affect the academic performance of their pupils, leading to the effect of “self-fulfilling prophecies”. Teachers form their expectations about the academic performance of their pupils based on the information they possess about the latter. The present study tested a hypothesis about a correlation between the teacher’s disposal of information about the pupil’s ranking on an initial diagnostic test at the beginning of the first grade and the pupil’s academic performance at the end of the first grade. It also tested the hypothesis that the teacher’s disposal of information about the pupil’s ranking can affect his or her expectations about the level of the pupil’s cognitive skills. In this large-scale cluster randomized controlled experimental study, the participants included 4,460 first-grade students from 188 schools in a Russian region. We divided the schools into the experimental and control groups randomly. The teachers in the control group received information about the basic skills of their pupils. In contrast, experimental group teachers additionally received information about their pupils’ ranking based on a combination of indicators of their cognitive (basic reading and math) and non-cognitive (personal and socio-emotional) skills. The study did not confirm the hypotheses.