Teacher Expectations Matter paper

Teacher Expectations Matter paper, August 2016

“We provide novel, arguably causal evidence that teacher expectations affect students’ educational attainment. On average, teachers are overly optimistic about students’ ability to complete a four-year college degree. However, the degree of over-optimism of white teachers is significantly larger for white students than for black students. This highlights a nuance that is frequently overlooked in discussions of biased beliefs: unbiased (i.e., accurate) beliefs can be counterproductive if there are positive returns to optimism or if there are socio-demographic gaps in the degree of teachers’ over-optimism, both of which we find evidence of.”

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/147851/1/dp10165.pdf

Nicholas W. Papageorge ,Johns Hopkins University and IZA

Seth Gershenson, American University and IZA

Kyungmin Kang, Johns Hopkins University