New Data Suggests Students Perform Higher When Teacher is of the Same Race

A new study suggests that students achieve more when their teacher is of the same race.

“Representation in the classroom: The effect of own-race teachers on student achievement,” which will be published in the April issue of the Economics of Education Review, looked at both the races and test scores of almost three million students in Florida, as well as the racial demographics of their teachers in order to find the correlation between the two.

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The study ultimately found that black, white, and Asian students all perform higher on tests when they see their own race represented at the front of the classroom. Considering the fact that the 2014-2015 school year is the first in the history of the United States to see minorities as the majority of students, this could signify a lot for the future of education, and amplify the recruitment of more minority teachers.