Student-Teacher Ethnoracial Matching at Charter and Traditional Public Schools

ABSTRACT

Using classroom-level data from nearly all California schools, we investigate whether Hispanic, Asian, Black, and Native students in grades K-5 are more likely to have a teacher of the same race at charter schools or traditional public schools in 2017-18, what school and student characteristics explain these differences, and how ethnoracial matching rates changed since 2012-13. Hispanic and Black students experience greater rates of ethnoracial matching at charter schools, whereas Asian and Native students experience greater match rates at traditional public schools. Having a same-race principal is a strong predictor of student-teacher ethnoracial match in many models. Since 2012-13, ethnoracial matching increased for Hispanic and Asian students, decreased for Black students, and remained stable for Native students. These findings are important given the benefits of exposure to teachers of the same ethnoracial identity and number of students of color in charter schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Student-teacher ethnoracial matching
• principal diversity and representation
• racial diversity in charter schools

Acknowledgments

We thank Cassandra Hart, Constance Lindsay, as well as participants of the International School Choice and Reform Conference, the Association of Education Finance and Policy conference, and the UC Davis Graduate Group of Education seminar series for comments on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Numbers representing California charter schools and student enrollment are calculated based on administrative data from Ed-Data (for the California numbers) and White and Hieronimus (2022) for national charter numbers.

2. The authors do not show their estimates of this finding, they merely write it as a footnote (p. 21).

3. For a critique of the Implicit Association Test used in this study and more general concerns about measuring implicit bias, see Frisby (2021).

4. Marian Wright Edelman, Founder and President of the Children’s Defense Fund said this line in the film Miss Representation, but it has also been attributed to Gloria Steinem and Sally Ride.

5. This NCES table also has data for white and “other.” “other” includes American Indian/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and two or more races.

6. The table of results for each sensitivity check for each ethnoracial group is available from the authors by request.

7. For Asian students, this number is 15.4%; Native, 83.6%; Hispanic, 5.9%; white, 0.0%. Authors’ calculations.