The Importance of Minority Teachers

Abstract

The demographic divide between teachers and students is of growing public concern. However, few studies have explicitly addressed the common argument that students, and particularly minority students, have more favorable perceptions of minority versus White teachers. Using data from the Measure of Effective Teaching study, we find that students perceive minority teachers more favorably than White teachers. There is mixed evidence that race matching is linked with more favorable student perceptions. These findings underscore the importance of minority teacher recruitment and retention.

Iowa City Community School District Multi-Stakeholder School Climate Task Force

“…Research supports this sentiment, with one recent study linking racial minority teachers to more favorable perceptions from students of all races. 10…”

“…In addition, many of the above mentioned social psychological interventions have strong research evidence of effectiveness and are relatively easy to implement. 10 There are a number of strategies to integrate a social psychological intervention into District practices. During the task force meeting, members primarily discussed an approach that consisted of giving out writing tasks to students in the classrooms.…”

“…Given the disparities across social groups in their experience and perceptions of school climate, developing school-based organized activities that target relationship-building and contact across groups, both with students and teachers, can improve the overall school climate and student attachment to the school. 10 Target School Community: School-based programs/activities that promote attachment to school…”

“…These types of disparities point to the importance of having a strong district commitment to multicultural education and having staff and teachers well-prepared to address the challenges of teaching an increasingly diverse student population. 10 Create "Look at things from the students' side, not a third party. "…”

Grasping the Interplay between the Verbal Cultural Diversity and Critical Thinking, and Their Consequences for African American Education

“…Countless research has established to date that such stereotypes about race have permeated education in harmful waves, and pushed individuals, who vowed to educate the masses, to close off opportunities of education to underrepresented groups even by their grading attitudes, expectations, and behaviors in class. Researchers analyzed educational, demographic, and survey data of 10,000 high school sophomores and their teachers using the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, to show that teachers typically underestimating their students' abilities, actually created a negative impact on their academic expectations of themselves, and this was especially harmful among Black students (Cherng and Halpin, 2016;Cherng, 2017). Further, Fleming (1984), and Smedley et al (1993) along with a large body of recent research (Locks et al, 2008;Hurtado et al, 2009) demonstrated that racial biases encountered in school severely negatively impacted Black students' academics, critical thinking, sense of belonging, and emotional development through heightened stress levels.…”