The Long-Run Impacts of Same-Race Teachers

65 Pages Posted: 26 Mar 2017 Last revised: 10 Jan 2023

See all articles by Seth Gershenson

Seth Gershenson

American University - School of Public Affairs

Cassandra Hart

University of California, Davis

Constance Lindsay

American University

Nicholas W. Papageorge

Johns Hopkins University Department of Economics

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Abstract

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. We show that assigning a black male to a black teacher in the third, fourth, or fifth grades significantly reduces the probability that he drops 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 created by the Project STAR class-size reduction experiment.

Keywords: teachers, long-run effects, educational attainment, racial gaps

JEL Classification: I2

Suggested Citation

Gershenson, Seth and Hart, Cassandra and Lindsay, Constance and Papageorge, Nicholas W., The Long-Run Impacts of Same-Race Teachers. IZA Discussion Paper No. 10630, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2940620 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2940620

Seth Gershenson (Contact Author)

American University - School of Public Affairs ( email )

4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20016
United States

Cassandra Hart

University of California, Davis ( email )

Constance Lindsay

American University ( email )

Nicholas W. Papageorge

Johns Hopkins University Department of Economics ( email )

3400 Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218-2685
United States

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