Research by School of Public Affairs associate professors Sean Nicholson-Crotty and Jill Nicholson-Crotty states that African-American children are three times as likely to be placed in gifted programs by a black teacher than by a white teacher.
The article “Disentangling the Causal Mechanisms of Representative Bureaucracy: Evidence from Assignment of Students to Gifted Programs,” published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, determines that the results of this research suggest black teachers are more likely to see black students as gifted than white teachers.
Jason Grissom and Christopher Redding of Vanderbilt University are also credited with authorship of the article, according to a press release.
“We find that African-American students are under-represented in gifted programs,” Sean Nicholson-Crotty said, according to the release. “And we find that having a black teacher dramatically increases the likelihood that a black student will be placed in a gifted program, relative to having a white teacher.”
More specifically, the study shows black teachers’ perceptions of black students are more positive than white teachers’ perceptions of black students. These perceptions drive differences in the way teachers assess those students.
“It’s that teacher-student match, independent of your test score,” Jill Nicholson-Crotty said. “It’s the relationship between the teacher and the student.”
Previous studies relating to misrepresentation of black students in gifted programs could not determine the cause, according to the press release.
This research uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study’s kindergarten cohort, a federal program that tracks information about students from kindergarten through eighth grade, to measure the odds that black students and white students will be placed in gifted programs.
This data includes adjustments made for student, teacher and school characteristics and information such as test scores for researchers to draw conclusions, according to the press release.
Researchers say the findings ultimately illustrate the value of schools hiring more teachers of color and that having a more diverse teaching force would raise the opportunity for equal representation of black students and white students in gifted programs.
Bridget Murray
