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Francis A. Pearman, II
Collective Racial Bias and the Black-White Test Score Gap
This study examines the relationship between county-level estimates of implicit racial bias and black-white test score gaps in U.S. schools. Data from over 1 million respondents from across the United States who completed an online version of the Race Implicit Association Test (IAT) were combined with data from the Stanford Education Data Archive covering over 300 million test scores from U.S. schoolchildren in grades 3 through 8. Two key findings emerged. First, in both bivariate and multivariate models, counties with higher levels of racial bias had larger black-white test score disparities. The magnitude of these associations were on par with other widely accepted predictors of racial test score gaps, including racial gaps in family income and racial gaps in single parenthood. Second, the observed relationship between collective rates of racial bias and racial test score gaps was explained by the fact that counties with higher rates of racial bias had schools that were characterized by more racial segregation and larger racial gaps in gifted and talented assignment as well as special education placement. This pattern is consistent with a theoretical model in which aggregate rates of racial bias affect educational opportunity through sorting mechanisms that operate both within and beyond schools.
Teachers, Schools, and Pre-K Effect Persistence: An Examination of the Sustaining Environment Hypothesis
The sustaining environments thesis hypothesizes that PreK effects are more likely to persist into later grades if children experience high-quality learning environments in the years subsequent to PreK. This study tests this hypothesis using data from a statewide PreK randomized experiment in Tennessee that found positive effects at the end of PreK that did not persist past kindergarten. These data were combined with teacher observation and school-level value-added scores from Tennessee’s formal evaluation system to determine whether positive effects of PreK persisted for the subgroup of students exposed to higher-quality learning environments between kindergarten and 3rd-grade. Neither exposure to highly effective teachers nor attending a high-quality school was sufficient by itself to explain differences in achievement between PreK participants and non-participants in 3rd-grade. However, this study found evidence that having both was associated with a sustained advantage for PreK participants in both math and ELA that lasted through at least 3rd-grade. Notably, however, very few children were exposed to high-quality learning environments after PreK, suggesting that maximizing PreK investments may require attending to the quality of learning environments during PreK and beyond.