A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that black students in community colleges perform better academically when their instructors are black. The results show that black students with black instructors reduce the academic performance gap with white students by one half.
The study found that minority students taught by minority instructors are 2.9 percentage points less likely to drop a course and 2.8 percentage points more likely to pass the course than minority students with white teachers. Minority students who have minority teachers are 3.2 percentage points more likely to receive a grade of B or above than minority students in classes taught by white instructors.
