A new study finds black teachers are more likely than white teachers to expect academic success from black students, even when they’re assessing the same student.
“When a black teacher and a white teacher evaluate the same black student, the white teacher is about 30 percent less likely to predict the student will complete a four-year college degree,” a press release from Johns Hopkins University says. “White teachers are also almost 40 percent less likely to expect their black students will graduate high school.” The gap widens when non-black teachers predict a black male student’s success.
The study looked at data from 8,400 10th grade public school students across the country. Although there was a gap between expectations for black students, white and black teachers tended to have the same opinions about white students.
It’s unclear exactly how the expectations gap affects students. “The direction of the effect of overly pessimistic expectations is theoretically ambiguous, as such expectations may cause students to either make ill-advised investments in higher education or motivate students to change their behaviors in ways that increase their potential and opportunities,” the study says.
The study will be published in the Economics of Education Review. The study was authored by Nicholas Papageorge, with Johns Hopkins, as well as Seth Gershenson and Stephen Holt, both with American University.
In trying to predict how the expectations gap affects students, Papageorge said low expectations may lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially if the student doesn’t have a mentor or role model to counter those expectations.
The authors now plan to research how this expectations gap affects students in the long-run in terms of later academic success, ability to find a job and criminal tendencies.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
