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Our work aims to substantiate and extend earlier findings on the effects of student-teacher race matching on academic achievement using longitudinal data for students in Grades 3 through 8 in Tennessee. We examine heterogenous effects not only by racial subgroup and student preparedness, as explored in prior literature, but also by levels of teacher effectiveness, drawing on data from the state’s teacher evaluation system. We find that student-teacher race congruence does not have a significant overall effect on test scores. However, subgroup analyses reveal a positive, significant race-match effect in elementary school math. We observe meaningful effects for Black students in both reading and math, race-matched students in the bottom-most preparedness quartile in math, and race-matched students assigned to teachers in the middle two teacher performance quartiles in math. Our results align with prior findings, emphasizing that race-match effects transcend state borders. Findings support policy efforts to diversify the educator labor force.

Elected representatives’ place of residence can reveal information about their socioeconomic status, their likely social networks, and potential biases in the constituencies they represent. Using data on home addresses we collected from local elections offices, we investigate the geographic distribution of school board candidates’, including winners’, places of residence across two election cycles for 610 school districts in Ohio. We employ geographic information systems (GIS) to identify census block group and school enrollment zones associated with each candidate’s residence. We document differences among block groups and schools with more and less school board representation, including a robust association between the relative affluence of a neighborhood and the likelihood of school board members residing in that area. We find that more citizens from affluent areas run for school board, and because a large proportion of school board elections feature minimal competition, these higher propensities to run explain disparities in representation.