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Teacher Expectations Matter

Nicholas W. Papageorge1; Seth Gershenson2; Kyung Min Kang3

1 Johns Hopkins University, IZA, and NBER · 2 American University and IZA · 3 Shanghai University of Finance and Economics

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2020 open access

We show that tenth-grade teacher expectations affect students' likelihood of college completion. Our approach leverages a unique feature of a nationally representative dataset: two teachers provided their educational expectations for each student. Identification exploits teacher disagreements about the same student, an idea we formalize using a measurement error model. We estimate an elasticity of college completion with respect to teachers' expectations of 0.12. On average, teachers are overly optimistic, though white teachers are less so with black students. More accurate beliefs are counterproductive if there are returns to optimism or sociodemographic gaps in optimism. We find evidence of both.

DOI
10.1162/rest_a_00838
Volume
102 (2)
Pages
234-251
Language
en
Export
BibTeX
Sources
crossref openalex