Minority reports
Exposure to Same-Race Teachers and Student Disciplinary Outcomes for Black Students in North Carolina
Constance Lindsay & Cassandra Hart
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using student-level administrative data from North Carolina, we explore whether exposure to same-race teachers affects the rate at which Black students receive exclusionary discipline, such as out-of-school suspensions, in-school suspensions, and expulsion. We find consistent evidence that exposure to same-race teachers is associated with reduced rates of exclusionary discipline for Black students. This relationship holds for elementary, middle, and high school grade ranges for male and female students, and for students who do and do not use free and reduced-price lunch. Although we find reductions in referrals for a number of different types of offenses, we find particularly consistent evidence that exposure to same-race teachers lowers office referrals for willful defiance across all grade levels, suggesting that teacher discretion plays a role in driving our results.
Girls Behaving Badly? Race, Gender, and Subjective Evaluation in the Discipline of African American Girls
Edward Morris & Brea Perry
Sociology of Education, April 2017, Pages 127-148
Abstract:
School disciplinary processes are an important mechanism of inequality in education. Most prior research in this area focuses on the significantly higher rates of punishment among African American boys, but in this article, we turn our attention to the discipline of African American girls. Using advanced multilevel models and a longitudinal data set of detailed school discipline records, we analyze interactions between race and gender on office referrals. The results show troubling and significant disparities in the punishment of African American girls. Controlling for background variables, black girls are three times more likely than white girls to receive an office referral; this difference is substantially wider than the gap between black boys and white boys. Moreover, black girls receive disproportionate referrals for infractions such as disruptive behavior, dress code violations, disobedience, and aggressive behavior. We argue that these infractions are subjective and influenced by gendered interpretations. Using the framework of intersectionality, we propose that school discipline penalizes African American girls for behaviors perceived to transgress normative standards of femininity.
“Welcome to the U.S.” but “change your name”? Adopting Anglo names and discrimination
Xian Zhao & Monica Biernat
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, May 2017, Pages 59–68
Abstract:
A field experiment and a lab experiment investigated how White Americans react to foreigners who present themselves either using original names or Anglo names. Drawing on self-categorization theory, hypotheses were derived from a partial ingroup membership framework. In Study 1, an email from a Chinese student requesting a meeting about graduate training was sent to 419 White professors with the name of the sender being varied (Xian versus Alex). Use of the Chinese name led to fewer responses and agreements to meet than using the Anglo name. In Study 2, a lecture recording from an international graduate student was presented to 185 White undergraduates with the name of the lecturer varied (Jian versus John). The preference for Anglo (Chinese) names over Chinese (Anglo) names was apparent among those high (low) in assimilationist and low (high) in multicultural ideologies. These findings point to an important interplay between partial intergroup membership and acculturation ideologies of perceivers in predicting bias. Future research directions from both minority and majority perspectives are discussed.
‘Hate at First Sight’: Evidence of Consumer Discrimination Against African-Americans in the US
Morgane Laouénan
Labour Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The paper tests evidence of customer discrimination against African-Americans in the US using a two-sector matching model with racial sector-specific preferences or abilities, employer discrimination, and customer discrimination. The test strategy makes it possible to disentangle customer from pure employer discrimination. This paper proves the existence of discrimination against African-Americans at job entry from both employers and consumers in the US. It also reports that racial prejudice has a quantitative effect on the relative employment and contact probabilities of African-Americans. A decrease in the intensity of discrimination by one standard deviation would raise the raw employment rate of African-Americans by 10% and would increase the proportion of African-Americans in jobs in contact with customers by 25%.
Is racial salary discrimination disappearing in the NBA? Evidence from data during 1985–2015
Hisahiro Naito & Yu Takagi
International Review of Applied Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study re-examines the racial salary gap of National Basketball Association players by constructing a long unbalanced panel covering the 1985–1986 to 2015–2016 seasons. Contrary to the results of previous studies, we find that non-white players are paid equally to white players with similar characteristics in the 1980s and 1990s, but that white players started to be paid about 20% more than non-white players in the last 10 years. Our results are robust to all specification checks, such as quantile regressions, controlling sample selection, different contract types, and player nationality. We find that neither employer preference nor income gap of white and black residents explains this increasing salary gap.
The Long-Run Impacts of Same-Race Teachers
Seth Gershenson et al.
American University Working Paper, March 2017
Abstract:
Black primary-school students matched to a same-race teacher perform better on standardized tests and face more favorable teacher perceptions, yet little is known about the long-run, sustained impacts of student-teacher demographic match. We show that assigning a black male to a black teacher in the third, fourth, or fifth grades significantly reduces the probability that he drops out of high school, particularly among the most economically disadvantaged black males. Exposure to at least one black teacher in grades 3-5 also increases the likelihood that persistently low-income students of both sexes aspire to attend a four-year college. These findings are robust across administrative data from two states and multiple identification strategies, including an instrumental variables strategy that exploits within-school, intertemporal variation in the proportion of black teachers, family fixed-effects models that compare siblings who attended the same school, and the random assignment of students and teachers to classrooms created by the Project STAR class-size reduction experiment.
Stretched Too Thin? The Paradox of Promoting Diversity in Higher Education
Edward Bishop Smith & Yuan Tian
Northwestern University Working Paper, January 2017
Abstract:
We examine an important unintended consequence of diversity promotion in higher education. Specifically we demonstrate that departmental efforts to increase the representation of racial minorities, coupled with the limited supply of minority doctoral candidates, leads to an increased prevalence of joint appointments among minority faculty. This outcome is important as joint appointments overexpose faculty members to a set of unique risks that can negatively affect their career advancement. Using comprehensive administrative data from a large U.S. public university from 1990 to 2009, we find that African American assistant professors are four times more likely to be jointly appointed as compared to their white colleagues. We further find that the hiring and joint appointment of African American assistant professors is motivated in part by efforts to increase diversity within departments. Finally, we demonstrate that independent of race, being jointly appointed at the assistant professor level is associated with poorer career outcomes. Ceteris paribus, assistant professors that are jointly appointed in two or more academic departments receive smaller year-over-year raises as a percentage of their income and face lower likelihoods of promotion to tenure. Together, our results highlight the unintended costs of diversity promotion in academia whereby using joint appointments to achieve diversity goals at the level of the academic department can negatively affect the employment outcomes of minorities and work counter to diversity goals at the level of the university.
Exploring school choice and the consequences for student racial segregation within Pennsylvania’s charter school transfers
Erica Frankenberg et al.
Education Policy Analysis Archives, 2017
Abstract:
Using individual-level student data from Pennsylvania, this study explores the extent to which charter school racial composition may be an important factor in students’ self-segregative school choices. Findings indicate that, holding distance and enrollment constant, Black and Latino students are strongly averse to moving to charter schools with higher percentages of White students. Conversely, White students are more likely to enroll in such charter schools. As the percentage and number of students transferring into charter schools increases, self-segregative school choices raise critical questions regarding educational equity, and the effects of educational reform and school choice policies on the fostering of racially diverse educational environments.
Re-Establishing the Social-Class Order: Restorative Reactions against High-Achieving, Low-SES Pupils
Anatolia Batruch, Frédérique Autin & Fabrizio Butera
Journal of Social Issues, March 2017, Pages 42–60
Abstract:
This research investigates a barrier faced by low-SES pupils who are on an upward social mobility trajectory: resistance to their high-achiever status. We hypothesize that, as they disconfirm the usual social-class academic disparities (i.e., high-SES on average outperform low-SES pupils), they threaten the status quo and induce restorative reactions that may hinder their chances of success. Experiment 1 showed that participants remembered less accurately information about pupils when low-SES pupils were presented as outperforming high-SES pupils than when the reverse was true. The errors appeared to be congruent with existing social hierarchies. In Experiment 2, preservice teachers assessed a test supposedly produced by a low- versus high-SES pupil who was presented as being either high or low achieving. The evaluation was harshest when the test was produced by a high-achieving low-SES pupil. These results suggest that people attempt to recreate the social-class academic hierarchy when it is challenged.
Teachers’ Expectations of Girls’ Classroom Performance and Behavior: Effects of Girls’ Race and Pubertal Timing
Rona Carter, Faheemah Mustafaa & Seanna Leath
Journal of Early Adolescence, forthcoming
Abstract:
Experiencing an early pubertal transition has been shown to increase the risk for internalizing and externalizing outcomes among girls. It is less clear how the expectations of other individuals can be critical determinants of vulnerability for early developers. This study used an experimental design to examine whether the expectations of teachers might be influenced by girls’ pubertal timing (early, on-time, late) and race (Black, White). Elementary school teachers (N = 220; Mage = 43 years; 91% female; 84% White) were randomly shown behavior vignettes consisting of drawings of girls in varying stages of pubertal development. They then rated each girl’s future academic/social functioning. Results demonstrated that teachers expected White and Black early developers to have more academic/social problems. Teachers also ascribed more academic/social problems to Black early developers relative to White early developers. The findings offer new insights into the synergistic linkages between pubertal timing and teachers’ expectations, with girls’ race accentuating this relationship.
Does diversity improve profits and shareholder returns? Evidence from top rated companies for diversity by DiversityInc
Greg Filbeck et al.
Advances in Accounting, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this study, we examine the relationship between the diversity efforts of firms listed in DiversityInc's list of Top 50 Companies for Diversity and their financial performance. We examine both an announcement effect and the risk-adjusted performance of diverse firms to a matched sample and the S&P 500 index. We find a positive effect related to the announcement of the DiversityInc Top Companies for Diversity list. When examining long-term performance using the risk-adjusted performance of listed companies, DiversityInc firms outperform the S&P 500 index but have performance that is either indistinguishable or inferior to a matched sample. DiversityInc firms exhibit superior return on assets compared to the matched sample, but this difference is explained by differences in firm size. Overall, we find limited support that inclusion in DiversityInc's list of top firms for diversity indicates improved performance over a matched sample.
Improving Admission of Low-SES Students at Selective Colleges: Results From an Experimental Simulation
Michael Bastedo & Nicholas Bowman
Educational Researcher, March 2017, Pages 67-77
Abstract:
Low socioeconomic status (SES) students are underrepresented at selective colleges, but the role that admissions offices play is poorly understood. Because admissions offices often have inconsistent information on high school contexts, we conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine whether providing detailed information on high school contexts increases the likelihood that admissions officers (n = 311) would recommend admitting low-SES applicants. Admissions officers in the detailed-information condition were 13 to 14 percentage points (i.e., 26%–28%) more likely to recommend admitting a low-SES applicant from an underserved high school than those in the limited-information condition, although the limited-information condition provided significant details about family SES and high school context. These findings were consistent regardless of the selectivity of the college, admissions office practices, and participant demographics.
Ethnicity and risk: A field test of the white-male effect
Shahar Sansani
Applied Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article, I analyse the different risk-taking tendencies of students comprising the two major ethnic groups in Israel, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, in a field setting. I determine ethnicity by students’ last names, and I measure risk by students’ propensity to give up a passing grade on a final exam in order to be able to retake the exam in pursuit of a higher grade, but with the risk of earning a lower grade and possibly not passing the course. Differences in preferences for risk may be part of the explanation for differential labour market outcomes between gender and ethnic groups. I find evidence that Ashkenazi men take more exam risk than both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi women, and Mizrahi men. This finding is consistent with the ‘White-Male Effect’, the notion that white males, or males from the dominant socio-economic group, perceive lower risks than females and non-whites.
Stereotype Threat and Stereotype Reactance: The Effect of Direct and Indirect Stereotype Manipulations on Performance of Palestinian Citizens of Israel on Achievement Tests
Caesar Hakim, Jenny Kurman & Yohanan Eshel
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The role of stereotype threat in performance of Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCI) on the psychometric exam (parallel to the SAT in the United States) was investigated. Two experiments, conducted in field settings, examined the role of stereotype threat in performance of PCI students in psychometric-like tests. Experiment 1, conducted on 135 Arab high school students, indicated that activation of the stereotype pertaining to the lower academic ability of PCI lowered participants’ performance relative to a control group. Experiment 2, which included 115 Arab students who participated in preparatory courses for the psychometric tests, showed that a direct manipulation of the stereotype led to stereotype reactance and increased performance, whereas an indirect manipulation activated the stereotype and resulted in lowered performance. These findings suggest that activating a stereotype threat or a stereotype reactance is contingent on the manipulation employed. Practical implications of these results are discussed.
The impact of affirmative action: Evidence from a cross-country laboratory experiment
Uwe Dulleck et al.
Economics Letters, June 2017, Pages 67–71
Abstract:
We use an implicit association test to examine whether there is evidence of a negative stereotype, with Australians relatively weak in mathematical skills vis a vis Chinese. Based on an existing stereotype, we examine the impact of affirmative action on the effort level of Australians (the favoured group) within the context of a cross-country (Australia and China) laboratory experiment. We compare results across two distinct affirmative action programs; one in which a well-established negative stereotype exists and a baseline where no known stereotype prevails. We find that the effort level declines in the baseline, but not in the presence of a real stereotype.
Incentives for Discrimination
Sue Mialon & Seung Han Yoo
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, April 2017, Pages 141–160
Abstract:
This paper models employers’ incentives for discrimination against ex ante identical groups of workers when the workers must compete for a limited number of positions. Employers benefit from discrimination against minority workers because it can reduce the overall risk from workers’ noisy signals by increasing the expected quality of “majority” workers and their chance to win the competition for the limited number of positions. We show that employers can influence the selection of a discriminatory equilibrium by choosing the set of finalists in competition primarily from a majority group, and favoring them when the two groups are equally qualified. We discuss the implications of equal opportunity laws in this context.