The race connection: are teachers more effective with students who share their ethnicity? - Research

Education Next, Spring, 2004 by Thomas S. Dee

In the mid-1960s, an acquaintance of mine was a young, timid teacher beginning her career in a virtually all-black high school on the South Side of Chicago. Even to this day, she recalls two events from that period. On one occasion, she saw a burly white male teacher telling a group of black teenagers that they were stupid and that they had better realize it. On another occasion, she observed as a classroom of unruly adolescents was silenced by the fixed stare of a black female teacher, whose disciplinary approach surely reminded many of their mothers at home.

The contrast between these two teachers, while more extreme than one usually finds, either then or now, nevertheless helps to explain why so many are urging the nation to recruit more minority teachers. The availability of minority teachers appears to be an important issue. While 17 percent of the students in K-12 public schools are black, black teachers make up just 8 percent of the teaching force (see Figure 1). These disparities are even more pronounced in many urban schools, where student bodies that are nearly 100 percent minority are often taught by majority-white teaching staffs.

However, we actually know very little about how differences between a teacher's race and those of her students affect the learning environment. This study makes use of data from a randomized field trial conducted in Tennessee to produce higher-quality information on this controversial subject than has been available previously. The results are troubling. Black students learn more from black teachers and white students from white teachers, suggesting that the racial dynamics within classrooms may contribute to the persistent racial gap in student performance, at least in Tennessee.

Why Race Could Matter

The racial interactions between teachers and students could influence student performance in several ways. For example, pupils may trust and respect someone with whom they share a salient characteristic, making learning come more easily. Likewise, a teacher of the same race may serve as a more effective role model, boosting students' confidence and enthusiasm for learning. However, while such role-model effects are widely believed to be important, there is actually little direct empirical evidence that they exist.

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Claude M. Steele's theory of "stereotype threat" suggests another way that student performance might respond to a teacher's race (and one for which there is empirical support). Stereotype threat can occur in situations where students perceive that a stereotype regarding their ability will come into play--such as when a black student is taught by a white teacher.

A series of experiments conducted at Stanford University by Steele and Joshua Aronson appear to confirm the existence of the stereotype threat phenomenon. Groups of students took tests comprising the most difficult items on the verbal GRE exam. When told beforehand that the test was a laboratory problem-solving task unrelated to ability, black and white students performed similarly. However, black students performed relatively worse when told that the test was diagnostic of ability. The racial differences were similar when researchers merely asked students to fill out a pretest demographic questionnaire that inquired into their race, a minor manipulation of the stereotype threat.

There may also be (largely unintended) racial biases in teachers' behavior. In particular, minority teachers may be more generous with minority students, devoting more time to them and making more favorable assumptions about their capabilities. White teachers may be relatively generous with white students in just the same ways. A limited body of experimental evidence does suggest that teachers, in allocating class time, interacting with students, and designing class materials, are more favorably disposed toward students who share their racial or ethnic background. For example, a 1979 study by Marylee Taylor placed white teachers in a teaching environment where they could not observe the student directly. Taylor found that the teachers provided less coaching and briefer, less positive feedback when told beforehand that the student was black. Similarly, studies based on observations from actual classrooms often find that black students with white teachers receive less attention, are praised less, and are scolded more often than their white counterparts.

However, there is surprisingly little empirical evidence on the relationship between students' exposure to teachers of their own race and their subsequent academic performance. And the available studies, all of which rely on observational data to compare the test scores of students with different kinds of teachers, actually find that having a teacher of the same race has little impact. However, the inferences based on conventional data sets could be quite misleading. For example, if lower-performing black students are more likely to be assigned to black teachers, the effects of such teachers will be underestimated.