Exposure to Same-Race or Same-Ethnicity Teachers and Advanced Math Course-Taking in High School: Evidence from a Diverse Urban District

Background/Context Research links advanced mathematics course-taking to important later outcomes, including college graduation and earnings, yet many students fail to progress into higher math courses as they move through high school. Black and Hispanic high school students are less likely than their white peers to take advanced math courses. A complex set of factors inform decisions about student course-taking, but teachers play key roles, including providing information about courses, giving students encouragement, helping students form aspirations (e.g., through role modeling), and serving as gatekeepers via grade assignment and formal recommendations. At the same time, growing empirical evidence suggests that students from different racial/ethnic groups benefit from being taught by teachers with similar demographic backgrounds, which motivates an analysis connecting math teacher–student racial or ethnic congruence with progression into higher math courses in high school. Purpose We investigate the degree to which having a math teacher of the same race or ethnicity predicts subsequent enrollment in more advanced high school math courses, as well as in honors and Advanced Placement (AP) math courses. We also investigate potential mechanisms, including impacts of student–teacher congruence on course grades and standardized test performance, which may in turn predict a higher likelihood of advanced math course enrollment. Setting We examine student-level administrative data from high schools in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the fourth largest school district in the United States. Research Design We estimate the likelihood that a student will take a higher level math course as a function of student–teacher racial/ethnic congruence, plus student, teacher, and classroom characteristics, and school fixed effects. This research design compares later math course-taking between students with and without race/ethnicity-congruent teachers within the same school, holding a variety of other factors constant. We estimate similar models for honors and AP course-taking. We also estimate models for math course grades and end-of-course (EOC) exam scores using school-by-course and student fixed effects. Findings/Results We find that high school students with a same-race or same-ethnicity teacher are more likely to take a higher math course in the next year than other students taking the same course in the same school. Associations are largest for Black students, who are 2 percentage points more likely to advance to a higher math course when taught by a Black teacher. Having a demographically similar teacher is also associated with movement into honors and AP courses in the next term, on average, though results vary by student subgroup. Students receive higher EOC scores and higher grades when taught by a demographically similar teacher, with higher grades even than what would be predicted by their EOC score, particularly in algebra. Conclusions/Recommendations Our analysis contributes to growing evidence on the importance of teacher diversity for outcomes for students from minoritized groups and is among only a very small set of studies that demonstrate teachers’ impacts on student outcomes not just for one year, but also in subsequent years. Our results underscore the importance of efforts to recruit and retain teachers of color, particularly in high schools. We recommend future research to better understand the mechanisms linking diverse teachers to student course-taking outcomes.

Associations Between Teacher–Student Racial/Ethnic Congruence and Public School Teachers’ Risk for Stress

Using national data from the National Center for Education Statistics 2011–2012 Schools and Staffing Survey and Common Core of Data, we examined the relationship between K–12 practitioners’ risk for stress and the teacher-to-student racial/ethnic congruence. Analyses indicated significant variation in risk for stress by school racial composition and suggested that the likelihood of being categorized as most at-risk for stress is associated with the teacher-to-student racial/ethnic congruence. Findings point to substantial differences in how teachers appraise their environments depending on school context, which has implications for how education stakeholders recruit and prepare classroom practitioners.

About Ethnicity, Fitting In, and Acting Out: Applying the Person–Environment Fit Framework to School Misconduct

Starting from a person–environment fit framework, this study investigates whether ethnic congruence—the percentage of co-ethnics in a school—relates to school misconduct and whether congruence effects differ between ethnic minority and majority students. Moreover, we investigate whether eventual associations are mediated by friendship attachment, perceived teacher support, and general school belonging. Multilevel analyses of data from 11,759 students across 83 Flemish secondary schools show that higher ethnic congruence is associated with lower levels of school misconduct but only for ethnic minority students. This effect was not mediated by friendship attachment, nor by teacher support, but it was mediated by general school belonging. We conclude that ethnic minority students in schools with a higher percentage of peers of co-ethnic descent are less likely to break the school rules because they feel more contented in the school context, which is congruent with the person–environment fit framework.

The Ethnic Politics of Coup Avoidance: Evidence from Zambia and Uganda

Though military interventions seem endemic in sub-Saharan Africa, more than a third of all countries have been able to avoid military coups. To solve this puzzle, this article relates the likelihood of military coups to the degree of ethnic congruence between civilian and military leaders, arguing that coup avoidance is most likely when government and army either exhibit the same ethnic bias or are both ethnically balanced. This argument is illustrated by a comparison of the diverging experiences of Zambia and Uganda. While Zambia is among Africa's coup-free countries, Uganda's vulnerability to military intervention has varied over time – with four coups under Obote and the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) but no coups under Amin and Museveni. Drawing on original longitudinal data on the ethnic distribution of political and military posts, the article shows that the absence of military coups in Zambia goes back to the balanced composition of government and army. In Uganda, coup avoidance under Amin and Museveni can be linked to the fact that government and army exhibited the same ethnic bias, whereas the coups against the Obote and UNLF regimes reflected either ethnic incongruence between civilian and military leaders or the destabilising combination of a similarly polarised government and army.