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Jeffrey Penney, Ph.D.

ESDC Labour program, Gatineau, Quebec, Canada

& Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia

Author: Jeffrey Penney

Abstract: A number of papers in the field of education find that students who share the same racial or ethnic background as their teacher experience increased academic achievement, but do not investigate the reasons why these racial interaction effects occur, which is of substantial policy interest. This paper fills this gap in the literature. I find that these achievement gains function primarily through active channels such as additional teacher effort and that the effects occur mostly at the intensive margin, suggesting that teachers exhibit favouritism towards students of their own race at the expense of students from other racial backgrounds.

Keywords: achievement, black-white test score gap, education, race, racial interaction effects

JEL Classification: I21, J15

Full Text:  “An Instructor Like Me: Uncovering the Channels of Racial Interactions”