How Same-Race Teaching Could Change Our Education System

Deciphering the causal effects, or “treatment effects”, of different educational designs on student outcomes is an increasingly difficult task in the United States. Understanding these effects is vitally important in order to provide students with the best opportunity for positive educational outcomes. This difficulty in parsing out design outcomes is due in large part to state-to-state variation in education approaches, particularly in low-income Black and Brown communities. It is also exacerbated by the ethical considerations of conducting randomized experiments in the public education sphere. Therefore, it is rare to find strong correlations between a treatment and long run student outcomes.

There is no doubt, though, that race plays a significant role in student outcomes. Researchers Seth Gershenson, Cassandra M.D. Hart, Joshua Hyman, Constance Lindsay, and Nick Papageorge recognize the potential for a causal relationship between race and education and examine this interaction on a granular level, focusing on the relationship between student and teacher. Specifically, they explore the role of same-race teaching. Same-race teaching is one of the few treatments that appear to have long run benefits on student outcomes, which is important considering baseline outcome rates for Black students are relatively low. The United States Census Bureau reported 55% of Black students graduated from high school in 1985 (we use this year because the study does), and 12% graduated from college. The authors approach the experiment by conducting an analysis of the Tennessee STAR study of 1985 and leveraging their findings against North Carolinian administrative data from 2000-2005.

The Tennessee STAR data consists of students in grades K-3 that were randomly assigned to have at least one Black teacher; about 31% had at least one Black teacher. The data was detailed enough to provide Gershenson et al. the ability to isolate disadvantaged students. Using the Tennessee STAR data, the authors conducted an experiment where same-race teaching was the treatment and high school graduation and college enrollment were the outcomes of interest. The STAR data, the primary dataset for experimentation in this paper, showed that the incoming kindergarten class was 37% Black, 53% male, and 54% qualifiers for free and reduced lunch, an indicator of a low-income household.

After using statistical tools such as instrumental variables to account for confounding variables, the authors found promising and possibly causal conclusions. Black students randomly assigned a Black teacher were 9 percentage points more likely to graduate from high school and 6 percentage points more likely to enroll in college than their “same-school, same cohort, Black peers who are not assigned to a Black teacher” (Gershenson et al., 2021). Notably, The STAR data showed that having a Black teacher had no effect on white students.

Following the analysis of Tennessee STAR data, Gershenson et al. hypothesized reasons for this compelling increase in student outcomes. The authors settled on the hypothesis that Black teachers are systematically more skilled than their white peers at instructing Black students (Gershenson et al., 2021). Specifically, Black teachers may embrace a set of ideas around teaching Black students rooted in existing relationships with the larger Black community (Gershenson et al., 2021). The authors raise the role model effect – the idea that seeing someone who looks like you be successful can make success easier to imagine for yourself – and the implicit bias that could accompany this. The role model effect is believed to be relevant to the experiment at hand, as the researchers found that when multiple characteristics are shared between student and teacher, i.e. race and gender, positive outcomes are stronger.

The STAR experiment and results serve as the primary indicator of Gershenson et al.’s empirical approach with the North Carolina data, acquired from the North Carolina Education Research Data Center (NCERDC). The NCERDC findings both complement and improve upon STAR’s conclusions for various reasons. The dataset is larger and includes multiple cohorts (unlike the STAR data) from the entire state. Additionally, NCERDC has more complete data on high school graduation than the STAR data. The comprehensive nature of this data provides an external check of the previous results and allows us to control for as many variables as possible.

The NCERDC data showed about 44% of Black students (but only 14% of white students) had at least one Black teacher in grades 3-5. Additionally, about 45% of Black students and 12% of white students were persistently economically disadvantaged, which the authors define as “being designated as economically disadvantaged in each year the student is observed from grades 3-8” (Gershenson et al., 2021).

Gershenson et al. make an effort to mirror the experimental design of STAR and do so by subsetting the sample to disadvantaged students. The results from the NCERDC data are, as expected, similar in many ways to those from the STAR sample. The differences in the two models arise from the NCDERC data’s effective gender-based analysis. Notably, for persistently disadvantaged boys, the NCDERC data shows that the effect of Black male teachers is three times larger than that of Black female teachers on Black male student college intent. This gender difference is substantial, and the authors hypothesize that it is, again, due to the ability to teach using culturally relevant pedagogy as well as the role model effect.

The authors conclude with confidence that, based on the strong similarities in trends between the Tennessee STAR data and the North Carolina data, there is causal evidence that Black students who have at least one Black teacher in elementary school are significantly more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college. Both datasets displayed statistically and economically meaningful results. However, despite the encouraging results, the data leaves much unknown, such as post-secondary completion and job acquisition. Additionally, the mechanisms through which Black teachers affect Black students are still unknown. This is exceedingly difficult to measure and will require further research. Finally, the question still remains as to how to incorporate these promising results into the Black workforce in an ethical manner. Because of the generally low pay of teachers, it is complicated to diversify the teacher workforce without paying Black teachers a higher wage. Gershenson et al. conclude by highlighting the need to support Black students with individuals that inspire and relate to them. The payoff from this seemingly simple maneuver is high enough to merit policy considerations.