Teacher Sorting and Own-Race Teacher Effects in Elementary School

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: I investigate “own-race teacher effects”—the extent that students benefit from having a teacher with the same racial background. Own-race teacher effects may justify recruitment of underrepresented groups in teaching and, in combination with peer effects, help to determine the optimal assignment of students to teachers. However, previous estimates of own-race teacher effects are confounded by the sorting of teachers across schools. Using administrative data from North Carolina public schools, I document that the quality of black teachers relative to white teachers increases with the school’s black enrollment share. To circumvent this endogenous sorting, I develop and estimate a novel teacher-level metric of own-race teacher effects based on teacher fixed effects. I find that own-race teacher effects are present for mathematics achievement, but significantly smaller than previous estimates.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 2009

Author	Miller, Conrad
Primary advisor	Hoxby, Caroline
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Department of Economics

Subject	Stanford Department of Economics
Subject	race
Subject	teacher quality
Subject	teacher sorting
Subject	achievement gap
Genre	Thesis

Related item	Title 2009 Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/hf823bc7767

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Preferred Citation: Miller, Conrad. (2009). Teacher Sorting and Own-Race Teacher Effects in Elementary School . Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/hf823bc7767

Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses

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