Abstract
This paper uses national data on eighth grade female students and their English, math and science teachers to examine teacher perceptions of student behavior, such as attentiveness and disruptiveness. Particular attention is paid to differences in perception by student race and socioeconomic status. I find that black female students are perceived as less attentive and more disruptive than their white, Hispanic, and Asian counterparts. Controlling for academic performance and socioeconomic status mitigates the differences in perceptions of attentiveness but not disruptiveness. Further, the perceptions of attentiveness are significantly related to the probability that a teacher recommends a student for honors courses. I discuss the implications of these findings for the educational outcomes of black female students.
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Notes
Ideally, I would also like to include controls for teacher characteristics such as race, gender and experience, but these variables are only available in the restricted use version of the ECLS-K.
Including more controls in the model leads to smaller sample sizes due to missing values. I ran the analysis using a sample that was balanced in observations across all models and the results were consistent.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Patrick Mason, Shanyce Campbell, Timothy Diette, William Darity, Jr., Rhonda Sharpe and the participants at The Invisible Woman Conference for their helpful suggestions and comments
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Francis, D.V. Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice? Teacher Perceptions of Black Girls in the Classroom. Rev Black Polit Econ 39, 311–320 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12114-011-9098-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12114-011-9098-y