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Race, ethnicity, and education
Experimental Effects of “Achievement Gap” News Reporting on Viewers’ Racial Stereotypes, Inequality Explanations, and Inequality Prioritization
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe “achievement gap” has long dominated mainstream conversations about race and education.
The Forgotten 20 Percent: Achievement and Growth in Rural Schools Across the Nation
Topics: Student LearningNearly one in five U.S. students attends a rural school, yet we know very little about achievement gaps and academic growth in rural schools. This study leverages a unique dataset that includes longitudinal test scores for more than five million 3rd to 8th grade students in approximately 17,000… more →
First Impressions: The Case of Teacher Racial Bias
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentWe study racial bias and the persistence of first impressions in the context of education. Teachers who begin their careers in classrooms with large black-white score gaps carry negative views into evaluations of future cohorts of black students. Our evidence is based on novel data on blind… more →
School Segregation At The Classroom Level In A Southern 'New Destination' State
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceUsing detailed administrative data for public schools, we document racial and ethnic segregation at the classroom level in North Carolina, a state that has experienced a sharp increase in Hispanic enrollment. We decompose classroom-level segregation in counties into within-school and between-… more →
Experimentally Estimated Impacts of School Vouchers on Educational Attainments of Moderately and Severely Disadvantaged Students
Topics: School ChoiceAlthough qualitative research suggests that school choice and other interventions are more beneficial for moderately disadvantaged than severely deprived students, the subject has barely been explored by quantitative studies with either observational or experimental designs. We estimate… more →
Bias in the Air: A Nationwide Exploration of Teachers' Implicit Racial Attitudes, Aggregate Bias, and Student Outcomes
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTheory suggests that teachers’ implicit racial attitudes affect their students, but we lack large-scale evidence on US teachers’ implicit biases and their correlates. Using nationwide data from Project Implicit, we find that teachers’ implicit White/Black biases (as measured by the implicit… more →
Parental preferences for charter schools in North Carolina: Implications for racial segregation and isolation
Topics: School ChoiceWe use information on the charter school choices made by North Carolina families, separately by race, who switched their child from a traditional public school (TPS) to a charter school in 2015-16 to explore how such choices affect racial segregation between schools and racial isolation within… more →
Collective Racial Bias and the Black-White Test Score Gap
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThis 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… more →
Sharing the Wealth: How Regional Finance and Desegregation Plans Can Enhance Educational Equity
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceMost racial and ethnic segregation—and most financial inequities—in American public schools occur between, not within, school districts. Solving these problems often requires interdistrict solutions based on cooperation within regions. This report uses three examples (Boston, MA; Hartford, CT;… more →
Minority Teacher Recruitment, Employment, and Retention: 1987 to 2013
This study examines the extent and sources of the minority teacher shortage—the low proportion of minority teachers in comparison to the increasing numbers of minority students in the school system. Using the National Center for Education Statistics’ Schools and Staffing Survey/Teacher Follow-Up… more →
Diversifying the Teaching Profession: How to Recruit and Retain Teachers of Color
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentResearch illustrates the importance of greater teacher diversity because of the substantial benefits teachers of color provide to all students, and to students of color in particular. Studies also show that policies must focus more effectively on retention of teachers of color, if diversity in… more →
California’s Positive Outliers: Districts Beating the Odds
Despite wide achievement gaps across California between students from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds, some school districts have excelled at supporting the learning of all their students. This analysis identifies these positive outlier districts—those in which students of color,… more →
Categorical Inequality in Black and White: Linking Disproportionality across Multiple Educational Outcomes
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceWe characterize the extent to which Black-White gaps for multiple educational outcomes are linked across school districts in the United States. Gaps in disciplinary action, grade-level retention, classification into special education and Gifted and Talented, and Advanced Placement course-taking… more →
My Brother’s Keeper? The Impact of Targeted Educational Supports
Topics: Student LearningTags: Race, ethnicity, and education, Culturally responsive schooling, Social and emotional learningThe My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) Challenge developed by President Obama supports communities that promote civic initiatives designed to improve the educational and economic opportunities specifically for young men of color. In Oakland, California, the MBK educational initiative features the African… more →
Trends in Children’s Academic Skills at School Entry: 2010 to 2017
Topics: Student LearningStudents’ level of academic skills at school entry are a strong predictor of later academic success, and focusing on improving these skills during the preschool years has been a priority during the past ten years. Evidence from two prior nationally representative studies indicated that incoming… more →
Conceptualizing Racial Segregation in Higher Education: Examining Within- and Between-Sector Trends in California Public Higher Education, 1994-2014
Conceptualizing and measuring levels of segregation in higher education is difficult as both vertical and horizontal sorting is prevalent and patterns vary across racial groups. In this paper, we measure various trends in racial segregation in California for 20 years. We find that the most… more →
School Segregation in the Era of Color-blind Jurisprudence and School Choice
Topics: School ChoiceThe decades-long resistance to federally imposed school desegregation entered a new phase at the turn of the new century, when federal courts stopped pushing racial balance as a remedy for past segregation, adopting in its place a color-blind approach in judging local school districts’… more →
The Added Value of Latinx and Black Teachers for Latinx and Black Students: Implications for the Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentA research synthesis points to the added-value—benefits to social and emotional development, as well as learning outcomes—for students of color taught by teachers of color. Given ongoing education debates, policymakers can use this evidence base to craft legislation aimed at… more →
The Effects of Student Growth Data on School District Choice: Evidence from a Survey Experiment
Topics: School ChoiceWe conduct an online survey experiment in which participants are asked to imagine that they are parents moving to a new metropolitan area. They then choose between the five largest school districts in that area. All participants receive demographic data for each district. In addition, some… more →
Are Schools Deemed Effective Based on Overall Student Growth Also Closing Achievement Gaps? Examining the Black-White Gap in Schools
Topics: MethodsResearch has begun to investigate whether teachers and schools are as effective with certain student subgroups as they are with the overall student population. Most of this research has examined the issue by trying to produce causal estimates of school contributions to short-term student… more →