Who teaches whom? Race and the distribution of novice teachers

Abstract

This paper focuses on one potentially important contributor to the achievement gap between black and white students, differences in their exposure to novice teachers. We present a model that explores the pressures that may lead school administrators to distribute novice teachers unequally across or within schools. Using a rich micro-level data set provided by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, we find that novice teachers are distributed among schools and among classrooms within schools in a way that disadvantages black students.