This dissertation provides three chapters on the economics of education. In the first chapter, I provide evidence that diversifying the labor supply of teachers to better reflect the racial distribution of students improves noncognitive outcomes for students of color without diminishing outcomes for White students. I use administrative data spanning 2007 to 2017 from the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the most racially diverse school districts in the country, to measure the effect of student-teacher race matching on various noncognitive and behavior outcomes: GPA, work habits, cooperation, grade retention, suspensions, absences, and a data generated noncognitive index. I mitigate the concern that race matches are endogenous by including school-grade and student fixed effects in a linear regression model. My findings indicate that students of color are expected to experience increases in GPA, work habits, and cooperation and see decreases in suspensions and absenteeism when matched with a teacher of the same race. I do not find statistically significant effects on White students' outcomes. Because noncognitive outcomes lead to higher high school graduation rates, college enrollment rates, and wages, such effects could lead to a tightening in the achievement and wage gap found between students of color and White students. This result can be achieved with an increase in institutional efforts to ensure teacher populations more closely reflect that of their students. The second chapter estimates the impact of race matched faculty (i.e., any teacher outside of a particular student’s classroom) on student test scores. While the student population rapidly diversifies, the teaching corps' diversification continues to lag behind. For example, the proportion of Latino student enrollment in public schools has increased from 11 to 27 percent in just the last two decades. In contrast, the share of Latino public school teachers during this same period has increased from 3 to only 9 percent (Pew Research Center, 2021). If the disparity between student and teacher racial distributions continues to grow, students of color may find it more difficult to benefit from direct student-teacher race matching. However, it may still be possible for students to benefit from same-race teachers even if they are not placed in the same classroom. Using administrative panel data between school years 2008-09 through 2017-18 from Los Angeles Unified School District, I estimate that Latino students see positive impacts of race matched faculty. By basing this study in an area with a large proportion of Latino students and teachers, we can fill a gap within the literature by examining the effects of race match and faculty race match on Latino students. The findings indicate that matching Latino students to racially congruent teachers and faculty can improve math and English Language Arts test scores. Increasing the supply of Latino teachers may provide a crucial catalyst in decreasing the achievement gaps found between Latino and white students. The final chapter continues along the lines of educational equity. The success of many students with disabilities (SWDs) depends on access to high-quality general education teachers. Yet, most teacher value-added measures (VAMs) fail to distinguish between a teacher’s effectiveness in educating students with and without disabilities. I create two VAMs: one focusing on teachers’ effectiveness in improving outcomes for SWDs, and one for non-SWDs. I find top-performing teachers for non-SWDs often have relatively lower VAMs for SWDs, and SWDs sort to teachers with lower scores in both VAMs. Overall, SWD-specific VAMs may be more suitable for identifying which teachers have a history of effectiveness with SWDs and could play a role in ensuring that students are being optimally assigned to these teachers.
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