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Low levels of teacher diversity in U.S. elementary and secondary schools represent a wasted opportunity to narrow achievement gaps. Evidence from other states suggests that students of color have better outcomes in the classrooms of teachers of color, but the teaching workforce remains predominantly white. Teachers of color are underrepresented at all stages of the human capital pipeline into teaching, and demographic projections suggest that the problem is likely to worsen. Given the existing literature on teacher-student demographic match which mostly focuses on the positive effects of teacher-student race match for Black students, there are additional questions that have yet to be explored. These include the role of gender and matching effects for Latino and Hispanic students. In this report, the researchers study the effects of exposure to Hispanic and Latino teachers on Hispanic and Latino students' scholastic and economic outcomes in Texas public schools, where the Hispanic share of teachers has increased from 15 percent to 27 percent from 1995 to 2018. The research design relies on within-school comparisons over time that control flexibly for variation in outcome dynamics across school districts. The researchers study short- and medium-term outcomes (e.g., standardized exam scores, discipline rates, and high school dropout rates) and long-term outcomes (e.g., high school graduation rates, college enrollment, college persistence, and college graduation) and find that exposure to teachers of color significantly improves short- and medium-term outcomes among elementary school students. The effects of teacher diversity are smaller and less precisely estimated for later grades and for long-term outcomes. These findings highlight the importance of policies aimed at increasing the representation of teachers of color in public schools.

Although increasing the racial and ethnic diversity on college campuses is a key component of any broad policy agenda aimed at reducing structural inequality, access to higher education does not always equate to graduation and equal labor market opportunities. For colleges, students, and society to reap the benefits of diversity, there needs to be more than just a diverse student population in colleges; there needs to be representation of all groups across all fields of study. To understand whether increasing diversity on campus is translating to equal access to opportunity, we examine racial and ethnic representation across college majors over time, finding that Asian, Black, and Hispanic students are often concentrated in majors with other students of the same race or ethnicity and that at institutions where Black and Hispanic segregation is worst, these students are least likely to graduate with high-paying degrees. We examine racial and ethnic imbalance within higher education institutions by using segregation indexes to summarize racial and ethnic sorting inside universities. We analyze whether students of different races or ethnicities are over- or underrepresented in certain fields of study, relative to the institutions they attend.

The US population is becoming more educated, but large gaps in postsecondary attainment based on race or ethnicity remain, particularly at more selective colleges. As a growing number of jobs require a college degree, it is imperative to increase college access among all racial and ethnic groups. In this report, we examined whether different racial and ethnic groups have equal access to higher education by looking at representativeness across postsecondary institutions. We constructed a new measure that compares each college's racial and ethnic demographics with the demographics of the college's market, evaluating whether each racial or ethnic group is over- or underrepresented at individual colleges and college sectors, relative to that college's or sector's pool of potential students. We confirm the presence and persistence of large national gaps in representation and find that Black and Hispanic students are underrepresented at more selective schools in ways that cannot be explained by differences in community demographics.

Many students are enrolled in segregated school systems with unequal access to resources. In this report, we present a measure that can help policymakers identify the schools in their system that are contributing the most to segregation. How our measure differs from traditional metrics: Much research on segregation relies on an absolute measure of segregation, which evaluates exposure and isolation between students of different racial groups within individual schools. But these measures can be misleading because they are strongly influenced by the racial composition of students in the neighborhood or system. Schools in areas with few white students could be considered "hypersegregated" for simply reflecting the pool of students they draw from. On the other hand, because these metrics often consider exposure of historically underserved populations--blacks and Hispanics--to other students--whites and Asians--they can miss schools that are predominantly white and Asian with a small minority community while penalizing schools that are predominantly black or Hispanic. Our Segregation Contribution Index assesses how much each school within a system--whether a district, county, or city--contributes to segregation by examining what would happen to segregation within the system if a school's actual racial composition were perfectly integrated--that is, replaced with a composition corresponding to that of the school system. Because redistributing students across a system could require students to travel long distances or create other logistical problems, we also assess whether systemwide integration would be improved if schools more closely resembled their neighborhoods. Our Segregation Contribution Index allows stakeholders to see which schools in a system contribute most to segregation or integration, helping policymakers better target their school integration efforts. Which schools contribute most to segregation? The measure can also be applied to groups of schools, allowing us to analyze different sectors. Our analysis finds the following: (1) Holding school size constant, private and charter schools tend to have higher average contributions to segregation than traditional public schools; (2) Charter schools are overrepresented among schools that are both significantly more and less black and Hispanic than the surrounding neighborhood; and (3) In neighborhoods with low shares of black and Hispanic students, private schools are 30 percentage points more likely than traditional public schools to segregate the system. Context matters: Private schools account for a large share of segregation relative to their enrollment share. Charter schools' contributions are high often because of where they are located. But traditional public schools serve almost 90 percent of students--segregation cannot be eliminated unless these schools better integrate. The index is not perfect. It does not, for example, demonstrate causal relationships and should not be used to assign blame to individual schools or types of schools. If one school significantly contributes to segregation, closing it will not necessarily better integrate the system because those students might sort into other schools in ways that exacerbate segregation. Our intent is to shed light on which schools contribute more to segregation in order to guide policymakers as they work to improve integration.

In this study, the authors provide the first nationally comprehensive examination of charter school effects on school segregation using longitudinal data on public school enrollment by grade level and race or ethnicity. The authors identify the causal charter school effects on segregation exploiting between-grade-level variation in the dynamics of charter school enrollment share within a school district in a given year from 1998 to 2015. Key findings include: (1) The finding that increasing charter school enrollment leads to small increases in segregation holds for cities and counties as well as school districts. The averages, however, mask considerable variation across districts, cities, and states; (2) The segregative effects of charter schools are greater in urban districts with high shares of black and Hispanic students and in suburban districts with low black and Hispanic representation; and (3) Charter schools have no discernible impact on the segregation of metropolitan areas. This is because the increase in segregation within districts in metropolitan areas is offset by greater integration between districts within the same metropolitan area. Essentially, districts within a metropolitan area become more diverse, but the schools within those districts do not become more integrated. [Olivia Piontek provided assistance in preparing this paper.]