Representation in the classroom: The effect of own-race teachers on student achievement

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Highlights

  • We utilize a large administrative panel dataset provided by the Florida Department of Education following the universe of test-taking students in Florida public schools from 2001–2002 through 2008–2009 to obtain estimates of achievement changes as students are assigned to teachers of various race/ethnicities from grades 3 through 10.

  • We find small but significant positive effects when black and white students are assigned to teachers of their own race/ethnicity in reading and when black, white, and Asian/Pacific Islander students are assigned to teachers of their own race/ethnicity in math.

  • We also examine the effects of race matching by students' prior performance level, finding that lower-performing black and white students appear to particularly benefit from being assigned to a race-congruent teacher.

Abstract

Previous research suggests that there are academic benefits when students and teachers share the same race/ethnicity because such teachers can serve as role models, mentors, advocates, or cultural translators. In this paper, we obtain estimates of achievement changes as students are assigned to teachers of different races/ethnicities from grades 3 through 10 utilizing a large administrative dataset provided by the Florida Department of Education that follows the universe of test-taking students in Florida public schools from 2001–2002 through 2008–2009. We find small but significant positive effects when black and white students are assigned to race-congruent teachers in reading (.004–.005 standard deviations) and for black, white and Asian/Pacific Island students in math (.007–.041 standard deviations). We also examine the effects of race matching by students' prior performance level, finding that lower-performing black and white students appear to particularly benefit from being assigned to a race-congruent teacher.

Introduction

Minority teachers are underrepresented in American public schools (Ingersoll and May, 2011, Kirby, Berends and Naftel, 1999, Villegas, Strom and Lucas, 2012). Though concerning in any profession, the disproportionate number of minority teachers is particularly noteworthy because a growing body of research suggests that minority students could benefit from assignment to teachers of their own race/ethnicity (Clotfelter, Ladd and Vigdor, 2007, Dee, 2004, Ehrenberg, Goldhaber and Brewer, 1995, Meier, Wrinkle and Polinard, 1999, Pitts, 2007). If that is indeed the case, then the underrepresentation of minority teachers in schools could be a contributing factor to the racial test score gap in the United States.

Many practitioners, policymakers, and others in the education community have claimed that minority teachers are uniquely positioned to improve the performance of minority students directly or indirectly, by serving as role models, mentors, advocates, or cultural translators for those students (Adair, 1984, Graham, 1987, King, 1993, Ladson-Billings, 1992, Pitts, 2007, Stewart, Meier and England, 1989). This has resulted in calls from prominent politicians and education administrators for the large-scale recruitment of minority teachers (see, for example, U.S. Department of Education, 2010). In some cases, state policies have been enacted to recruit minority teachers. For example, Florida adopted a strategy in 1996 to recruit and train more minority teachers by offering an annual scholarship of up to $4000 for African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, and Native American students in Florida's public or private universities that are admitted into a teacher education program (Florida Fund for Minority Teachers, Inc., 2014).

Whether or not assignment to a teacher of the same race/ethnicity is related to student achievement is an empirical question that has yet to be fully resolved. The analyses presented in this paper add to a growing body of research by taking advantage of a large dataset that includes approximately three million students linked to 92,000 teachers over a period of seven years throughout the Florida public school system. Following the performance of individual students across an entire state as they are assigned to teachers of different race/ethnicities throughout their elementary and secondary education provides an especially rigorous test of the claims that minority teachers can boost the performance of minority students in both elementary and middle/high school grades.

We find that student math and reading achievement is significantly, positively influenced by the race/ethnicity of their teacher. Specifically, student math achievement increases by .008 standard deviations (SD) in math and .001 SD in reading. Although small, the overall match effect masks important heterogeneity by race. Results for black and white students are significantly positive in reading, with effect sizes of .004 and .005 SD, respectively. In math, results for black, white, and Asian students are .019, .007, and .041 SD, respectively. The largest positive impacts observed are for Asian students in grades six through ten, where student/teacher race matching is associated with a math achievement increase of .053 SD. Results for Hispanic students provide a notable exception to these findings and are discussed in further detail below.

The remainder of this paper proceeds as follows. In Section 2 we review the relevant literature on the effects of student/teacher race matching. In Section 3 we describe the data employed in this analysis and the student/teacher matching process. In Section 4 we present our empirical strategy. In Section 5 we present the primary results as well as additional analyses that evaluate our findings with regard to student performance levels. We discuss the results and the limitations of the study in the final section.

Section snippets

Literature

A number of theories exist to explain the mechanisms by which assignment to an own-race/ethnicity teacher might influence a student's achievement. Minority teachers may influence minority students in a passive way, by indirectly serving as role models (Adair, 1984, Graham, 1987, Hess and Leal, 1997, Stewart, Meier and England, 1989). If this is the case, students may respond to demographically similar role models by raising their motivation and personal expectations.3

Data

The student-level dataset we use contains observable characteristics for the universe of test-taking Florida public school students in grades three through ten for each year from 2001–2002 through 2008–2009. In addition to student demographic information, the dataset includes each student's test scores on the math and reading portions of the state-mandated standardized exam, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT).5

Empirical strategy

We use student fixed effects to estimate the relationship between student/teacher race-matching and student achievement. This procedure eliminates potentially biasing unobservable student characteristics by estimating the coefficients within, rather than between students. We estimate models taking the form: Yijkst=β0+β1Zijkst+β2RaceMatchijkst+β3Xst+ϕt+αi+γit+τk+ɛijkstwhere Yijkst is the test score of student i, assigned to teacher j, in course k, and school s, during year t. Z is a vector of

Results

We first perform an analysis over the full sample, testing for the aggregate effect of any own-race/ethnicity matching in grades three through ten (Table 3). Using this approach, we find small, positive effects in both reading and math.

Table 3 presents the results of three separate models. For ease of interpretation, all test scores have been standardized within grade by year to have a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. The first panel relies upon student fixed effects for

Discussion

Overall, the results presented here indicate that assignment to an own-race/ethnicity teacher has positive and potentially policy relevant reading achievement impacts for black and white students, and significant math achievement impacts for black, white, and Asian/Pacific Island students. In general, the results for black and white students are strongest at the elementary level whereas results for Asian/Pacific students are strongest at the middle/high school level. We also examine the effects

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