White Teachers Have Lower Expectations of Black Students, Leading to Lower Student Performance

[hand2handking]

[h1]  White Teachers Have Lower Expectations of Black Students, Leading to Lower Student Performance, Study Shows[/h1]
April 1, 2016  | Posted by David Love

Teachers have a big impact on the success of students, as their support — or lack thereof — helps chart a course for young minds.  When one factors race into the equation, the consequences can be particularly devastating for Black students who are subjected to white teachers who doubt their ability and question their potential for success.

A new study to be published in the Economics of Education Review  found that when teachers have lower expectations of their students, these can translate into self-fulfilling prophecies.  If teachers don’t expect their students to achieve, this could impact student performance, especially disadvantaged children who may not have role models to counter a teacher’s low expectations.  The study —“Who believes in me? The effect of student-teacher demographic match on teacher expectations” — was co-authored by Nicholas Papageorge, an economist in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University; Seth Gershenson, assistant professor of public policy at American University; and Stephen B. Holt, a doctoral student at American University.

The trio focused on data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, which examined 8,400 10th-grade public school students. In the study, Black and white teachers were asked to assess the students and predict the level of education they believed the students would attain.  While the teachers made the same predictions concerning white students, they differed in their assessment of Black students.

Johns Hopkins University

Specifically, the study found that white and other non-Black teachers were 12 percentage points more likely than their Black counterparts to predict Black students would not graduate from high school.  In addition, non-Black teachers were 5 percent more likely to predict Black boys’ failure to graduate than Black girls.

When a white teacher and a Black teacher assessed the same Black student, the white teacher was 30 percent less likely to predict the student will graduate with a four-year college degree. Moreover, the white teacher was nearly 40 percent less likely to expect the Black student to complete high school.

Further, white male teachers are 10 to 20 percent more likely to have low expectations for Black girls. But Black female teachers are considerably more optimistic about the ability of Black boys to succeed than any other group.  Black women teachers were 20 percent less likely than white teachers to say a student would not graduate, and 30 percent less likely than Black male teachers.

The study also revealed that math teachers had significantly lower expectations for female students.  And as for Black students, especially Black boys, biased expectations have long-term effects on students.  A non-Black teacher in a 10th grade class made Black students far less likely to pursue that particular subject by taking similar classes.

“What we find is that white teachers and Black teachers systematically disagree about the exact same student,” Papageorge said of the research. “One of them has to be wrong.”

“If I’m a teacher and decide that a student isn’t any good, I may be communicating that to the student,” Papageorge added. “A teacher telling a student they’re not smart will weigh heavily on how that student feels about their future and perhaps the effort they put into doing well in school.”

The authors believe that these findings have far-reaching implications beyond education, extending to the workplace and beyond.

“While the evidence of systematic racial bias in teachers’ expectations uncovered in the current study are certainly troubling and provocative, they also raise a host of related, policy-relevant questions that our research team plans to address in the near future,” Gershenson said. “For example, we are currently studying the impact of these biased expectations on students’ long-run outcomes such as educational attainment, labor market success, and interaction with the criminal justice system.”

This most recent study comes as others have already sounded the alarm on the crisis of a lack of teacher diversity  in public schools across the U.S., and the role of teacher bias in the paucity of Black students ingifted and talented programs.   While white and Asian students dominate these advanced classes, the presence of Black teachers increases the likelihood of Black students being placed in these programs threefold.

As Atlanta Black Star  has reported in the past, of the over 3 million public school teachers in America, more than 80 percent of them are white women.  This racial imbalance has an impact, particularly with regard to the instruction of Black boys, leading to lower-quality instruction and lower grades, more referrals to special education, and far more expulsions and suspensions.

http://atlantablackstar.com/2016/04...ing-to-lower-student-performance-study-shows/

thoughts? 

 

[numbah1grimey]

'Twas... designed...to... be... that... way...

 

[doublemesh96]

I disregard most things that say "studies show"

 

[AZwildcats]

I have first hand experience of this at my majority-white high school

 

[cedric ceballos]

I disregard most things that say "studies show"

This

 

[futurehendrix]

I graduated from an all black school. The white students there maybe 2 or 3 in my class didn't graduate college. Hell, they both Rednecks. I can count on maybe 1 hand how many ppl graduated college in my class.

 

[Nawzlew]

Also kids' reaction to the treatment by teachers. Kids (mostly males) will develop "willfull laziness" as a response to their negative treatment.

 

[3am scholar]

>www.atlantablackstar.com

 

[frankmatthews]

I was in a college english course, reading aloud for the class, and the teacher kept saying the big words for me before i got to them. Had me heated.

 

[doublemesh96]

I was in a college english course, reading aloud for the class, and the teacher kept saying the big words for me before i got to them. Had me heated.

 

[hand2handking]

Teachers' Lower Expectations for Black Students May Become 'Self-Fulfilling Prophecies,' Study Finds

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rule...lf-fulfilling_prophecies_researchers_say.html

White teachers are generally less optimistic about their black students' chances of obtaining a four-year degree than black teachers, a new study finds. And those lowered expectations could become "self-fulfilling prophecies" when students internalize them or when teachers change their approach to students as a result, researchers suggest in an article published in Education Next.

"Our analysis supports the conventional wisdom that teacher expectations matter," write Seth Gerhenson, a public policy professor at American University, and Nicholas Papageorge, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University. "College completion rates are systematically higher for students whose teachers had higher expectations for them. More troublingly, we also find that white teachers, who comprise the vast majority of American educators, have far lower expectations for black students than they do for similarly situated white students."

The authors suggest schools should address teacher expectations, work to eliminate racial bias among staff, and seek to hire a more diverse teaching force.

Measuring Bias in Teacher Expectations
Gerhenson and Papageorge drew their conclusions after analyzing data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, a nationally representative set of 6,000 students from the cohort of teenagers who were in 10th grade in 2002, and collected by a division of the U.S. Department of Education. That dataset includes information from student surveys, teacher surveys, standardized tests, and administrative data from schools. Among the data points—survey responses from students' math and reading teachers asking whether they expect each student to finish high school, complete some college, or earn a degree.

Surveyed teachers expected 58 percent of white high school students to finish at least a four-year degree. They expected 37 percent of black high school students to do the same.

When evaluating the same black student, white teachers were nine percentage points less likely than black teachers to expect that that student would earn a college degree.

Correlation vs. Causation
The researchers also found that students were more likely to complete a degree if their teachers predicted they would.

But correlation is not equal to causation. Were teachers unfairly biased against their students? The researchers said that teachers' perceptions could be based on an awareness of systemic problems those students faced that might make degree attainment more difficult—problems like poverty and unequal educational resources.

So they analyzed the data in several different ways to look for evidence that teachers' expectations were too low and evidence that those lower expectations affected students' degree attainment. In one analysis, they analyzed one teacher's perception of the student, controlling for the other teacher's perception of the same student and other factors, like students' backgrounds and past grades.

"The second teacher's expectation is a valuable control in this setting, as it explicitly accounts for many of the unobserved factors that affect both the first teacher's expectation and the student's educational attainment," the researchers write.

Another analysis incorporated other data points, including teacher optimism (measured by determining if their expectations for their students are, on average, higher than other teachers'), teacher survey responses about individual students' attentiveness in class, and student survey responses about whether they enjoy the class.

Their conclusion is that all teachers "are overly optimistic about whether their students will complete college, but that white teachers are less optimistic about black students than are black teachers."

"All teachers are optimistic, but white students receive more optimism than their black classmates," the article says. "This means that even though white teachers' lower expectations for black students are in a sense more accurate, this accuracy is selectively applied in a way that puts black students at a disadvantage. Since positive expectations increase students' likelihood of going to college, the greater optimism heaped upon white students magnifies black-white gaps in college completion."

Why High Expectations Matter for Students of Color
Gerhenson and Papageorge's analysis builds on previous research that shows, among other things, that adults see black girls as less innocent than their white peers and that teachers have differing expectations for students of color.

Why do these expectations matter? How do they affect student outcomes?

"Students might perceive and emotionally react to low or high teacher expectations, which could benefit or damage the quality of their work," the researchers write."Or, they might actively modify their own expectations and, in turn, their behavior to conform to what they believe teachers expect of them. Alternatively, teachers with expectations for certain types of students may modify how they teach, evaluate, and advise them, and in the case of low expectations, could perhaps shift their attention, time, and effort to other students.

"Each of these possibilities creates feedback loops that trigger self-fulfilling prophecies: intentionally or not, teacher expectations cause student outcomes to converge on what were initially incorrect expectations."

 

[sooperhooper]

They're too busy banging students.

Op you better be a member of the naacp or uncf or something.

 

[jaypesoz]

I was in a college english course, reading aloud for the class, and the teacher kept saying the big words for me before i got to them. Had me heated.

Damn

 

[sooperhooper]

I was in a college english course, reading aloud for the class, and the teacher kept saying the big words for me before i got to them. Had me heated.

hell naw. Knowing me I would've 1,000% called her out.

 

[Brownstone]

In my experience I have a lower expectation of white teachers.

 

[hand2handking]

‘She Was Trying to Put Us Black Kids Down’: Sub Resigns After Class Says She Spread MLK Conspiracy Theory

Nathan Byrd, a fifth-grader at Rand Road Elementary in Garner, N.C., poses with a football. (family photo)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/educ...s-after-class-says-she-spread-mlk-conspiracy/

For many students, a substitute teacher means a refreshing change of pace for that day’s lesson plan.

That was supposed to be the case during Nathan Byrd’s Friday music class, where he says the teacher’s replacement was expected to put on a movie. Instead, he and his family allege the sub berated the fifth-grader for his clothing and made other outlandish remarks — invoking President Trump and religion before falsely telling students the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. committed suicide.

The offensive comments were made at Rand Road Elementary in Garner, N.C., and were documented on Facebook that evening by Nathan’s father, Billy Byrd. The elder Byrd said the substitute teacher, who has since been forced to resign, told Nathan and other boys of color in the class their athletic apparel “set them up for prison” and that they were “one mistake away” from being incarcerated.

“It made me feel at that time discriminated against; it was like she was trying to put us black kids down as if we were nothing,” Nathan said in an interview Monday. “I told her, ‘You’re predicting my future that hasn’t happened. I’m 10 years old and you’re older than me; you’re telling me based on my clothing I’m going to prison?' If she has a problem with it, that’s her decision.”

The Byrds say the teacher didn’t stop there, adding that she came up with her own unusual lesson plan that “glorified President Trump and his love for God, country and all Americans." Billy Byrd wrote on Facebook. Byrd said the teacher told the students in the class that those who failed to support Trump and acknowledge he is a “good Christian” were not good Christians themselves.

The unusual class was further marred when the teacher asserted that King’s assassination was fabricated, and that he had actually killed himself. Nathan says the instructor asked the class if they’d heard of King before making the false statement, which he and his classmates called her out on, as they did with the other claims she made.

“It was crazy because, it’s like, the teacher’s supposed to be giving us the facts that we need to know in school to be better in life, but we’re the ones who’s telling her what’s right,” Nathan said. “Everything she said was very wrong, I had to let her know Martin Luther King was assassinated; he did not commit suicide.”

While it is Black History Month, the students were not supposed to be learning about any type of history in music class Friday, Nathan said. The family says the sub had difficulty getting the students to follow her instructions, prompting her to divert discussion to politics, religion — and eventually — the clothing choices of several minority students in the class.

Billy Byrd said his son wore a T-shirt, joggers and Jordan-brand sneakers Friday, an outfit he included in his Facebook post. He told The Washington Post his son was one of four minority students the substitute teacher, who is white, called out in her tirade — a notion Byrd found to be problematic.

“My son doesn’t sag; he doesn’t wear his pants inappropriately — we don’t do that,” the father said, adding that the class is majority white. “For her to target them because young black boys are wearing Jordans, joggers and hoodies, that’s just bogus. That shouldn’t lead to her identifying them as a threat or prison material.”

Byrd said he was happy with how school administrators handled the incident, which he and his son each reported to officials that day. Tim Simmons, chief of communications for the Wake County Public School System, said Tuesday the school’s principal and staff first learned of the allegations Friday afternoon and spoke with “as many students as possible before the day ended.”

 

[TURBO UNO]

Wonder if the speed was what threw her off

 

[hand2handking]

 

[DCAllAfrican]

I have first hand experience of this at my majority-white high school

Can you explain what you saw in regarda to this?

I come in peace

 

[hand2handking]

Upper East Side School Ignored Racist Bullying of Sixth-Grade Son, Says Mom


Allyson Davis, left, says Robert F. Wagner Middle School acknowledged the targeting of sixth-grade son Tyler only when she asked. Angel Chevrestt

https://nypost.com/2019/03/16/upper...-racist-bullying-of-sixth-grade-son-says-mom/

The parents of an 11-year-old black student whose white classmate draped a “noose” of yarn around his neck at an Upper East Side public school are outraged that no one called them after the frightening incident.

The white kid told him, “This is what your ancestors went through,” and later called the victim “burnt,” a racial slur for dark skin.

His mom, Allyson Davis, said she learned what happened to her son Tyler at Robert F. Wagner Middle School three days later only when the distressed boy told his older sister.

She told The Post that the school’s assistant principal, Lindsay Oakes, acknowledged that the teacher witnessed the bullying of her sixth-grade son — the only black child in his class — but only after she asked about it.

“They were definitely trying to brush this under the rug,” Davis said.

Saying she was “alarmed to hear” about the March 8 incident, Oakes told Davis she had talked to the student responsible and called his parents, the mom said.

But Oakes would not discuss discipline with Davis, citing confidentiality, she said.

In an interview with The Post, Tyler said he was shocked and upset by the encounter, which occurred while he and other students were in art class weaving with yarn.

“I was having a conversation with my friends,” he said. “That’s when the kid came up behind me and tied a piece of yarn around my neck. It wasn’t tightened to the point where I could not breathe.”

After the “ancestors” remark, Tyler and his friends told the kid to stop and asked why he did it. “He said it was just a joke,” Tyler said.

The next Monday, when Tyler mentioned something about burning, the other student said to him, “You’re already burnt,” he said.

When confronted, “He said it’s something his camp counselor says,” Tyler said. “That was his excuse.”

It was the first time he had been taunted at school, according to Tyler, who said, “I feel like he should apologize.”

The boy wants the school to put his tormentor in another sixth-grade classroom, but administrators told his mom that Tyler had to switch classes if he wanted to avoid him, Davis said.

His parents have kept him home since last Monday. “He loves school and his after-school clubs,” said dad Terry Davis. “It’s not fair to him.”

Davis went to the NYPD’s 19th Precinct station house. Officers confirmed the incident and agreed to let her file a report, a spokesman said.

Schools are obligated to notify parents immediately when their kids are bullied, according to rules the city Department of Education promised to follow after settling a class-action lawsuit last year.

Last week, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli blasted the city for under-reporting school bullying incidents.

More than a third of all NYC schools in 2015-16 and nearly a third in 2016-17 did not cite a single occurrence, his audit found.

In January, parents of students at Robert F. Wagner complained that the school didn’t keep them informed when a student posted photos of guns on Instagram with the message, “See you guys tomorrow.” The NYPD called it a hoax.

Oakes did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

“Our schools must be safe and welcoming environments for all students, and they must report incidents to families promptly,” said DOE spokeswoman Miranda Barbot.

She said the school investigated the March 8 allegation “immediately” and “addressed it through discipline and guidance counseling.”

 

[6 Rings G.O.A.T.]

Sad.

 

[hand2handking]

Michigan Schools Face Huge Racial Disparity-and It's Hard to Fix

Education Week

When it comes to diversity, it's teachers rather than students who are falling behind in school.

Teaching staffs in Michigan, like those across the country, have been much slower to diversify than the student bodies they teach.

Michigan's student population is 18 percent African American, but its public school teaching ranks are only 6 percent black. More than half of Michigan school districts have no African American teachers.

For Hispanics, the disparity is even greater. They compose 8 percent of the student population, but barely 1 percent of Michigan teachers.

"It's nice to have people that you identify with, or at least in some aspects, whether it's race or career path, something like that. It is really beneficial," said Courtney Alexander, 22, of West Bloomfield who recently graduated from Michigan State University.

School districts say they are aware of the issue and some have been trying to close the gap by ramping up recruitment of minority teachers and using other means to attract more diverse candidates. They acknowledge it's not easy.

"We've been to college job fairs for teachers where there might be one minority candidate," said Peter Toal, superintendent of Westwood Heights School District just west of Flint, which had the largest racial disparity in the state, according to the Free Press analysis. "They have the option of going pretty much wherever they want, because people are all trying to diversify their workforce."

Racial Disparity

Enrollment in Westwood Heights schools has risen from 850 students in 2013 to more than 1,500 now. That growth has altered the racial composition of the schools.

"If you look at back in 2014, I think we had one African American teacher in the district," Toal said. "The schools used to be 85 percent white. Today, it's flipped the other way."

By fall of 2018, the district's student population was 84 percent black. The most recent data available on teacher demographics is from 2016 and showed only 11 percent of Westwood Heights teachers were black, marking the greatest disparity on a percentage basis of any district in the state.

Toal said the district is making progress and when the teacher data is updated, he expects the gap to narrow.

"We've added nine African American teachers to our staff in the last two years, along with four African American paraprofessionals," Toal said. The district's technology director and its community outreach director also are black and a majority of the district's administrators are nonwhite, he said.

But the hiring sometimes comes at the expense of other districts. Toal said several of the new teachers formerly taught in neighboring districts including Flint. Some of those districts have had layoffs in recent years, creating uncertainty for teachers.

Westwood has a balanced budget and is growing, so many of those teachers are willing to jump ship, he said.

In Mount Clemens, 67 percent of students are black, but just 8 percent of teachers are. School Superintendent Teresa Davis said it's a been a concern for parents for several years, but it's difficult to fix, especially because the district hasn't done much hiring at all in recent years because of budget troubles.

"We have to have an opening," said Davis, who is African American. "You can't just just say we're hiring all African Americans and getting rid of the ones we have. We do look for the most quality person. We don't have a huge pool of black people in teaching in the first place."

Best Recruiters

The Detroit Public Schools Community District has the largest number of African American students in the state, but its racial disparity is far smaller than some of its neighbors. In Detroit schools, 82 percent of the students are black compared with 67 percent of teachers.

"The district developed a strategic outreach and teacher recruitment plan that takes into consideration the many challenges associated with attracting and hiring certified teachers who represent our student body," spokeswoman Chrystal Wilson said. "Part of that plan includes being intentional about where we recruit such as engaging in national events held at Historically Black Colleges and Universities."

Terrence Martin, an African American teacher who now heads the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said his union members can help with recruitment. Wealthier districts can offer more money, but Detroit can offer the chance to make a difference in the lives of young African Americans.

"We're the best recruiters. We're in the classrooms. We're from the city," Martin said. "We have a story to tell. We have the experience on the ground. It's not a video at a job fair. Sometimes it's not about the money per se. It's really telling those stories and talking about the culture and the climate of a school district and of a city."

Some of Detroit's immediate neighbors don't come anywhere close to its teacher diversity.

In Eastpointe schools, 74 percent of the students are black but only 4 percent of the teachers are. In South Redford schools the figures are 75 percent for students and 6 percent for teachers. In Harper Woods, 93 percent of the students are black, but only 25 percent of the teachers are.

Oak Park, Ferndale, Van ****, and South Lake school districts also have disparities of more than 50 percent between the teacher and student populations. Southfield, River Rouge, Fitzgerald, and Hazel Park also have large disparities.

"You have a lot of black children now in suburban school districts and all across southeast Michigan and you don't have African American teachers who are there teaching them," Martin said. "There is a need."

Suburbs Far Behind

Suburban school leaders acknowledge that they haven't kept up.

"The student demographic has shifted very rapidly," said Eastpointe Superintendent Ryan McLeod. "The teacher demographic has lagged behind that. We are making an effort to try to get more diverse teaching staff here."

McLeod said that takes time.

"If you were to ask students, I think they notice that that difference exists," McLeod said. "I think if you were to ask parents, they also would say the same thing."

Staffers do recognize the imbalance and the district has provided training sessions to help them better understand the students they are teaching, McLeod said.

Finding teachers of color forces districts to be creative. Last year, he hired Melinda Jackson, an African American special education teacher who had recently retired from Berkley schools after 20 years. She now teaches in the resource room at Eastpoint's Forest Park Elementary School.

Jackson said she believes she can make a difference. She said she doesn't think that teachers must be of the same race as their students to be effective, but it can help.

"You certainly have to be able to look at that child and see their potential and see in them someone that you love, or could have loved," Jackson said. "In other words, when I look at this, like a black teacher looking at a young black man, I'm seeing my brothers. I'm seeing my uncle, my dad, my cousin. You're seeing people that you know in them."

Jackson, a native of Gary, Indiana, said she has been racially outnumbered her entire career, from her years studying education at Purdue University to every time she walked into a faculty lounge. But she said race alone is not enough to make an effective teacher.

"It doesn't go by color, there's some black teachers, they don't have it," she said. "There's no magic. Don't think that just because you're black, you walk in the door, black children will be better educated because of you."

Teachers need to love their work and their students and recognize the different ways that kids learn, Jackson said.

"You do what it takes to reach Johnny or Jamal," she said.


Why It Matters

Researchers say students exposed to teachers from their own racial or ethnic group perform better in school.

Studies in Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee all have shown small but positive increases in test scores among black students who had a black teacher, said Anna Egalite, an associate professor of education at North Carolina State University.

"People maybe are looking in the wrong place when they're looking in test scores," said Egalite, who studies racial and economic achievement gaps. "That might be just the tip of the iceberg."

Martin, the teachers' union president, said teachers of color serve as role models.

"For young black boys to see black men teachers is hugely important," he said. "Many of them don't have a male role model or black father in the home. And so in many instances, they yearn for that, and school is that first institution outside of the home where you look for that."

Egalite said in addition to serving as role models, black teachers often have higher expectations for students of color.

"It might be very direct, it might be the teacher reaching out and being a mentor, being very active in that student's life," she said. "There is interesting work that shows that gifted and talented referrals are higher in the presence of a match. When they have a black teacher, they're more likely to refer black students to a gifted and talented program. That's an example of how they're being advocates for them."

Other research shows lower suspension rates for black children who have black teachers and other benefits as well, Egalite said.

"There's another paper that shows that long-term effects, like finishing high school, there's a benefit from having a teacher even as far back as 3rd grade," Egalite said. "Did you have one black teacher along the way along your path from elementary, middle high school? They find that that one teacher made the difference for graduation."

Courtney Alexander is African American and recently graduated from Michigan State. She's starting a job at Beaumont Hospital and plans to attend medical school next year. She attended West Bloomfield schools growing up and didn't have many black teachers.

Still, she said she did have two black staffers who impacted her education. Pat Watson, the school's athletic director who later became principal, was one. The other was an elementary school teacher, Jennifer Graham, who encouraged Alexander over the years and provided classroom volunteer opportunities.

"You kind of put yourself in their shoes and realizing like, 'wow, you know, they're doing it, I can do it, too, it is like very important.'"