Nicholas Papageorge

Skip to main content The authors thank Stefanie DeLuca and conference and seminar participants at the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, Eastern Economic Association, Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE), and the Association for Education Finance & Policy (AEFP) for providing helpful feedback. Kristina Curley and Sarah Sullivan provided able research assistance.

Students of color benefit over the short and long run when taught by a same-race teacher. This finding is now well established in empirical research. Particularly for Black students, having even one same-race teacher improves test scores, graduation rates, attendance, and behavioral outcomes. These direct effects of “race-matched” student-teacher interactions have led to calls for diversifying the teaching force to make it more representative of the student population.

The US teaching force remains disproportionately white while the student body grows more diverse. It is therefore important to understand how and under what conditions white teachers learn racial competency. This study applies a mixed-methods approach to investigate the hypothesis that Black peers improve white teachers' effectiveness when teaching Black students.