Teachers of color increase school success for students of color. Yet, little attention has been paid to whether school attendance behaviors also increase from same race and ethnicity matches. To address this, our study used administrative data provided by a California high school district for the school years 2014 to 2018. We explored student absenteeism at the date and class period levels. Using this rich, longitudinal data set, we employed grade, school, class period, student, and date fixed effects models to examine the association between student–teacher matches and student absenteeism. Student–teacher race and ethnicity matches were associated with fewer unexcused absences for Latinx students. The results also indicate that associations were strongest for Latinx students in 11th and 12th grades—the age group in K–12 that has the most individual agency when it comes to getting to school. Furthermore, we found no evidence of declines in excused absences, which reflect health.
Her research focus includes people of color and women in STEM and quality in K-12 and higher education. Prior to FIU, Dr. Fletcher served as the Senior Manager for the Summer Engineering Experience of Kids (SEEK) program and the Director of Pre-college Programs for NSBE. Additionally, she spent time in industry holding technical and operations-based roles and has experience with outreach projects focused on STEM education and mentoring.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.