This study found that Black primary-school students matched to a same-race teacher perform better on standardized tests and face more favorable teacher perceptions, yet little is known about the long-run, sustained impacts of student-teacher demographic match. Assigning a Black male to a Black teacher in the third, fourth, or fifth grades significantly reduces the probability that he will drop out of high school, particularly among the most economically disadvantaged Black males. Exposure to at least one Black teacher in Grades 3–5 also increases the likelihood that persistently low-income students of both sexes aspire to attend a four-year college. These findings are robust across administrative data from two
states and multiple identification strategies, including an instrumental variables strategy that exploits within-school, intertemporal variation in the proportion of Black teachers, family fixed-effects models that compare siblings who attended the same school, and the random assignment of students and teachers to classrooms.
U.S. Department of Education
This material is in the public domain. While permission to reprint is not necessary, publication should be cited. This website was funded through the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) and developed by the Region 7 Comprehensive Center at RMC Research Corporation. (Award # S283B190023). This website contains resources that are provided for the reader's convenience. These materials may contain the views and recommendations of various subject matter experts as well as hypertext links, contact addresses, and websites to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. The U.S. Department of Education does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of any outside information included in these materials. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Education. No official endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education of any product, commodity, service, enterprise, curriculum, or program of instruction mentioned in this document is intended or should be inferred.
