 High school role models and minority college achievementScott Delhommer Economics of Education Review, 2022, vol. 87, issue C Abstract: Large racial differences persist in college enrollment and major choice, which may be exacerbated by the racial distribution of high school teachers. In this paper, I present the first evidence that matching high school students with same-race teachers improves the students’ college enrollment. To address selection and the sorting of students and teachers, I use detailed Texas administrative data on classroom assignment, exploiting variation in student and teacher race within the same course, year, and school, eliminating 99% of observed same-race sorting. Race-matching raises minority students’ course performance as well as improves longer-term outcomes like high school graduation and college enrollment. Black and Hispanic students matching with a same-race teacher in a given subject also become more likely to major in that subject in college with strong effects for STEM majors. Finally, I find much smaller race-matching for White students, suggesting policies to make the teaching population more representative would benefit minority students with minimal negative spillovers to the White student population. Keywords: Underrepresented minorities; Minority achievement; Racial matching; Minority teachers; Same-race teacher; Texas (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:87:y:2022:i:c:s0272775721001333 DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2021.102222 Access Statistics for this article Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier |
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