Do High School Students With a Same-Race Teacher Attend Class More Often?

Abstract

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.

Teacher Beliefs and Student Learning

“…Matching sees if students of the same race as their teachers perform better in school. Students with teachers of the same race have been shown to have better academic (Dee, 2004;Redding, 2019) and nonacademic outcomes (Gershenson et al, 2022;Gottfried et al, 2021;Scherer et al, 2021). These findings are supported by experimental evidence from Tennessee where students randomly assigned to teachers of the same race had significantly better academic achievement, graduation rates, and college enrollment rates (Dee, 2004;Gershenson et al, 2022), with teacher expectations of students being one hypothesized mechanism.…”

“…However, Glock and Klapproth (2017) found that preservice teachers had more negative implicit attitudes toward minority ethnic groups versus a comparable group of in-service teachers who spent time in diverse schools, suggesting that exposure and contact may lessen negative attitudes. Other aspects of school composition, such as how the teachers' individual characteristics (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation, disability status) reflect the characteristics of the student body could also play an important role (Egalite et al, 2015;Gottfried et al, 2021). Overall school climate, such as values related to diversity, may be critical too.…”

School attendance and school absenteeism: A primer for the past, present, and theory of change for the future

“…Calls are growing to reduce or eliminate barriers to school attendance such as digital divides, disparities in school discipline, inequities in school funding, lack of access to school-and community-based care, oppressive school climates, transportation vulnerabilities, and victimization, all of which disproportionately impact vulnerable youth . In addition, efforts to integrate themes of social justice and equity into education include revising school curricula toward multiple perspectives, addressing personal biases, supporting vulnerable students with respect to school completion, and matching the demographic characteristics of school staff and students (Spitzman and Balconi, 2019;Gottfried et al, 2021). Such efforts will also include a greater recognition that the surrounding community 10.3389/feduc.…”

Using Demographic Data as Predictor Variables: a Questionable Choice

“…Non manipulability does not mean that schools do not engage in successful strategies to support students of specific demographic groups. Indeed, schools have provided services to support homeless students since the late 1980's (Yon, 1995), recent research has found that targeted supports can increase graduation rates for Black male students (Dee & Penner, 2021), and there is increasing awareness that student-teacher demographic match is an important factor in school success for underrepresented groups (Gottfried et al, 2022).…”