Black Students Are Less Likely To Get Suspended When They Have Black Teachers
So, hire more black teachers.
Black students are routinely punished more harshly in school than white counterparts. However, new research shows there may be a relatively simple fix for this disparity: more black teachers.
For years, data from the U.S. Department of Education has shown that black students disproportionately face exclusionary punishments, like suspensions and expulsions. But new research published Tuesday in the quarterly journal Education Next finds that black students are less likely to receive detentions, suspensions or expulsions when they are taught by educators who are also black.
Researchers from American University and University of California, Davis, looked at teacher demographic and student discipline data for North Carolina elementary school students from 2008 to 2013. The data included certain identifiers that allowed researchers to match a student’s discipline records with the race of their classroom teachers. The data allowed researchers to compare the discipline records of individual students as they progressed throughout elementary school.
Previous studies used aggregate data. But the new study used precise information that allowed researchers to “really match students one-to-one with a teacher,” said co-author Constance Lindsay.
Overall, researchers found that students were less likely to face exclusionary discipline when taught by teachers who look like them.
“This effect is driven almost entirely by black students, especially black boys, who are markedly less likely to be subjected to exclusionary discipline when taught by black teachers,” says the study. “There is little evidence of any benefit for white students of being matched with white teachers.”
Researchers found that 16 percent of black boys in the study were subjected to exclusionary discipline when they had white women as teachers. However, when black boys were taught by black women, this number dropped to 14 percent. This number fell further when black boys were taught by black men.
Black girls were also less likely to get sent to detention, suspended or expelled Black Students Are Less Likely To Get Suspended When They Have Black Teachers | Huffington Post: