Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 25, No.

2,1997 (235-248)

Minority Teachers, Minority Students, and

College Matriculation: A New Look at the Role-
Modeling Hypothesis
Frederick M. Hess and David L. Leal*

In this article, we present for the first time systematic

evidence that the percentage of minority faculty has a significant
positive relationship with overall college matriculation rates in urban
school districts across the nation. Although there is little discussion in
the education literature of how minority teachers might influence
achievement by students of all races, there is a widespread assumption
that minority teachers improve the performance of minority students.
Our data support this assumption, but they also suggest an important
caveat. We will explain why this finding could mean that systemic
school district behaviors cause the higher rates of college attendance,
while the ethnic makeup offaculty acts as a proxy for these behaviors.
This finding has important policy implications, as focusing only on the
role-modeling hypothesis might lead to incomplete or incorrect reform
remedies for urban school districts.

In this article, we present for the first time systematic evidence that the
percentage of minority faculty has a significant positive relationship with overall
college matriculation rates in urban school districts across the nation. Although
there is little discussion in the education literature of how minority teachers might
influence achievement by students of all races, there is a widespread assumption
that minority teachers improve the performance of minority students. Our finding
supports this assumption, but it also suggests an important caveat. We will
explain why this finding could mean that systemic school district behaviors are
causing higher rates of college attendance, while the ethnic makeup of faculty is
acting as a proxy for these behaviors.
This has important substantive implications, as we will show that
focusing only on the role-modeling hypothesis argued by Fraga, Meier, & England
(1986) and others might lead to incomplete or incorrect policy remedies. If it is
system behavior that causes both more minority hiring and higher rates of college
matriculation, then it is those behaviors that should be examined and emulated. A
remedy that focuses on hiring minority faculty may mistake a spurious effect for a
cause, and may consume scarce urban school district resources that could be used
to aid students more effectively. The role-modeling hypothesis and the system
behavior hypothesis are not mutually exclusive, however, and we will argue that
both are reflected in the data.

Literature Review
There is a widespread assumption in the education community that hiring
minority teachers will improve minority student performance (Adair, 1984;
Foster, 1989; Graham, 1987; King, 1993; Ladson-Billings, 1992; Stewart, Meier,
^ England, 1989). However, there is not a great deal of evidence to support this
proposition, and the empirical research on this subject focuses on one ethnic
group—Latinos. There are some studies showing that Latino teachers may have a

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Policy Studies Journal, 25:2
positive impact on measures of Latino student behavior (Fraga et al., 1986; Meier
& Stewart, 1991; Polinard, Wrinkle, & Longoria, 1990), as well as research on the
connection between Latino teachers and Latino student test scores (Meier, 1993).
The assumption that minority teachers will improve the performance of
students who share their ethnicity is founded on two different, but compatible,
hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that minority teachers will be role models for
minority students (Adair, 1984; Graham, 1987; Stewart et al., 1989) and
empathetic toward them (Alexander & Miller, 1989; Foster, 1989, 1990; Ladson-
Billings, 1992), thereby enhancing minority student performance. The second
hypothesis is that White teachers generally have low expectations for minority
students (Cornbush & Korth, 1980; Davidson & Lang, 1960; Rosenthal &
Jacobson, 1968; Wilkerson, 1970) or are racist (Trueba, 1983), and therefore
hinder minority student performance. Hereafter, these more specific hypotheses
will be referred to jointly as the "role-modeling hypothesis."
However, there is little evidence to support either of these claims for
same-race teachers. In a recent consideration of the literature on the effect of
African-American teachers on minority students, Cizek (1995, p. 90) wrote, "Ii
would be unwise to suggest that African-American teachers are de facto better
teachers of minority students than are teachers of other ethnic backgrounds
without substantial evidence." In an introduction to King's (1993, p. 113) article
advocating the recruitment of minority teachers, the joumal editor noted similarly,
"There has been relatively little research to provide guidance on the effect of
minority teachers on minority students." King (1993, p. 130) stated more strongly
that, "empirical research is necessary to determine the effects and the potential
benefits of having African-American teachers and a varied racial/ethnic teaching
force for all ethnicities of students." Cizek (1995, p. 83) characterized the
literature reviewed by King (1993) on the positive effects of minority teachers on
minority students as a collection of "essays, commentaries, and reflective pieces."
There even is evidence that minority teachers may be less effective with
minority children than are other teachers (United States Commission on Civil
Rights, 1973). In fact, given evidence that minority teachers generally are less
well prepared (Cizek, 1995; King, 1993; Smith, 1989) and may be less able than
minorities who choose other occupations (Roberson, Keith, & Page, 1983),
minority teachers might be expected to have a negative impact on overall student
performance.

Hypotheses
Our analysis of 62 urban school districts finds that, after controlling for
other relevant factors, the minority percentage of school faculty has a strongly
positive relationship with college attendance among the overall student
population. Given the fact that there is only limited broad-based and systematic
evidence to suggest that minority teachers enhance even minority student
academic performance, we find this evidence to be startling. The data consist of
the urban school districts surveyed by the Council of Urban Boards of Education
(CUBE)i in 1992.
This finding is consistent with the role-modeling hypothesis, and at first
glance is a confirmation of the research cited earlier on minority students and
teachers. The relationship, however, also could be a spurious one.^ The finding
that an increased minority presence on a teaching faculty is associated with

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 HesslLeal: Minority Teachers, Minority Students, and College Matriculation
heightened student performance generally is equally consistent with an argument
that districts hiring minority teachers systematically are enhancing student
performance in other ways. We present here a second set of hypotheses that could
explain the minority teacher finding but may have little or nothing to do with the
race of the teachers themselves. These other factors associated with minority
teachers also may help improve the quality of teaching, so that districts with a
higher percentage of minority teachers produce higher student performance.
There may be several factors at work explaining higher rates of college
attendance in districts with a higher percentage of minority teachers, besides role
modeling or heightened faculty sensitivity. There are at least three hypotheses
that explain why districts with a large number of minority faculty might be better
than other districts at sending students to college: (a) Schools that hire minority
teachers may do so as part of a general effort to improve urban student
performance, so that increased diversity is merely one manifestation of a district's
reform efforts.^ (b) Districts hiring minority faculty may have higher faculty
turnover. Therefore, these districts would have more new teachers, who may be
more energetic or open to professional innovation than more senior teachers near
retirement, (c) Minority faculty may be more capable than White faculty because
particularly before the 1970s teaching was one of the more prestigious positions
available to Blacks while teaching was a less prestigious occupation for Whites.
This could produce a self-selection effect in which minority teachers, particularly
older ones, are more competent than their White counterparts.
Any of these approaches could impact student performance, in whole or
in part, through mechanisms other than the previously cited role-modeling
hypothesis. In the research that has been conducted to date, however, the minority
teacher variable would pick up the entire effect. Consequently, we argue that
underspecification plagues policy conclusions drawn from previous work. These
hypotheses, as noted above, do not exclude potential role-modeling effects.
The implication of any of our three hypotheses is that strategies that seek
simply to put minority teachers in classrooms may create unanticipated
undesirable effects, particularly if it means hiring less qualified teachers or
interfering with those behaviors that have made districts with diverse faculties
more capable. Therefore, it is important that we examine whether these
hypotheses are valid before basing prescriptive policy on the role-modeling
hypothesis. Although we cannot test all these hypotheses directly with this
dataset, we will present some evidence for the systemic model. We also will test
the role-modeling hypothesis by examining how minority teachers impact
minority student matriculation in the South; a legacy of discrimination suggests
that this is the region where role-modeling effects should be largest.
In sum, we suggest that the few previous studies that have attempted to
find same-race teaching effects may have been flawed by their premise.
Presuming that minority teacher hiring would enhance minority student
performance, they looked at that relationship and found what they expected: More
minority teachers were associated with higher minority student outcomes.
However, that finding is entirely consistent with the spurious effects model we
suggest above, in which more minority teachers might be associated with higher
student outcomes generally. By looking at too narrow a group of students, this
larger relationship could be missed easily because the two relationships appear
identical for any selected subsection of the student population.
The role-modeling hypothesis predicts that:

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Policy Studies Journal, 25:2
Minority teachers —> higher minority student performance

The structural hypotheses suggest that the role-modeling approach is

plagued by a crucial omitted variable, which is school system behavior. The
argument is that system behavior causes both minority teacher hiring and
improved student performance. The structural hypotheses predict that:

District behavior and selection effects -> higher student performance

and that

District behavior and selection effects -^ higher percentage minority teachers

It is clear that these two hypotheses will be indistinguishable if only

faculty ethnicity and student performance are studied, as in our study and in
previous work in this field. Sorting out the true causal relationships requires that
future studies control for the kinds of district behavior and selection effects that
we hypothesize may be driving the results.

Variables
A variety of possible outcome variables can be used to measure school
performance. Most of these variables are troubled by data collection problems
that make cross-district comparisons of dubious value. There are four outcome
measures available in the CUBE dataset: high school graduation rate, the
percentage of students taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), the average
SAT score, and the percentage of students entering college. We use college
matriculation as the dependent variable for several reasons, which are discussed
below.
Using the high school graduation rate variable was problematic. First of
all, the school districts in the CUBE study often provided percentages that were
not comparable. Some districts reported the percentage of entering freshmen who
graduated (students who finished in 4 years), while others reported the percentiige
of seniors who completed that school year. Some districts counted those who quit
school, returned to school, and then quit a second time as two cases of a student
failing to graduate. Most districts did not report how they obtained their
graduation figtire.
We also did not use SAT scores, because they are a misleading indicator
of student achievement. SAT scores are determined largely by the percentage of
students who choose to take the test, and therefore SAT scores are generated for
noncomparable populations. A school district in which a larger percentage of
students took the SAT actually will fare worse than a district in which a smaller
percentage of students took the test. Districts with more students considering a 4-
year college would appear to be educating their students more poorly than a
district where only a small number of highly motivated students took the test.
However, the percentage of students taking the SAT is not a good
measure of achievement either. Any student is allowed to take the test, so merely
taking the SAT is not a measure of actual achievement. In addition, colleges in
much of the interior of the United States require students to take the American
College Test rather than the SAT, while junior colleges and community colleges

238
 HesslLeal: Minority Teachers, Minority Students, and College Matriculation
do not require any test. Therefore, students may take or not take the SAT for a
variety of reasons that have nothing to do with achievement.
Other types of test scores might be useful, but they are not available in
the CUBE dataset. Furthermore, the comparability and objectivity of standardized
tests administered in different districts is largely illusory. A 1987 study (Cannell,
1987) of all 50 states discovered that no state is below average at the elementary
level on any of the six major nationally normed commercially available tests.
Additionally, 90% of local school districts claimed that their average scores
exceeded the national average, and "more than 70 percent of the students tested
nationwide are told they are performing above the national average" (Cannell,
1987, pp. 1-2).
Lieberman (1993, p. 83) offered an extensive discussion of the problems
presented by attempts to gauge school district performance based on test data. His
investigation of Cannell's 1987 study showed that average test scores had been
inflated artificially in several ways: (a) Poor students were excluded or
discouraged from taking the tests; (b) teachers assigned tests as homework or
taught test items in class; (c) test security was minimal or nonexistent; (d) students
were allowed more time than prescribed by test regulations; (e) unrealistic, highly
improbable improvements from test to test were not audited or investigated; (f)
teachers and administrators were not punished for flagrant violations of test
procedures; and (g) test results were reported in ways that exaggerated
achievement levels. Others who have also noted the many problems with
standardized testing include Clarke & Agne (1997), Finn (1991), Orfield &
Ashkinaze (1991), and Sizer (1996).

College Matriculation
The percentage of students entering college was the best available
measure of achievement for several reasons. First, increasing the percentage of
graduates attending college is a goal common to high schools across the nation.
Thus, unlike the SAT, it is a criterion by which all high schools can be compared.
The college matriculation rate also measures some basic amount of academic
achievement, unlike graduation rates, which reflect little more than attendance in
many urban systems. It seems reasonable to believe that college matriculation is,
in part, a reflection of the efforts of teachers to motivate students, which makes it
an appropriate dependent variable for this study. Aside from the occasional
athlete, the average urban high school student is unlikely to be recruited by a
college. High school may be the only place where students are pushed toward
college, particularly in urban districts, where the social problems of poverty, one-
parent families, lack of role models, violence, and teen pregnancy are well
documented (Peterson & Jencks, 1991).
The measure of college matriculation is the percentage of high school
students attending college reported by each district responding to the CUBE study.
The figure reported by each district undoubtedly is imprecise, but that would only
produce inefficiency—not bias—in our estimates (King, Keohane, & Verba,
1994). Inaccuracies in these figures would only weaken our findings if certain
kinds of districts systematically reported their college enrollment figures as higher
or lower than do other kinds of districts. We presume that all districts reported the
most optimistic estimates they can, which minimizes concem for this problem."*

239
Policy Studies Journal, 25:2

Minority Faculty
The key explanatory variable we investigate is the percentage of the full-
time teaching staff comprised of racial minorities. There are a variety of ways this
variable could be operationalized. We counted the total number of minority full-
time equivalent (FTE) faculty, and then divided that by the total number of full-
time equivalent district faculty. We adopted this approach because we are
interested in what is symbolized by the presence of nontraditional faculty, rather
than in the presence of a specific ethnic minority. The minority percentage is
almost entirely Black and Latino faculty, although a handful of Asians and Native
Americans are included in this figure (Blacks and Latinos comprise over 95% of
the FTE minority faculty).^
Other Variables
The percentages of Latino students and Black students are included as
separate variables in order to examine the differences these groups have on district
educational outcomes. We also included a measure of the percentage of the
school board consisting of racial minorities, based on the hypothesis that minority
board members might work especially hard to improve educational outcomes for
minority students.
A dummy variable for whether or not a district has ever been under a
desegregation plan is also included. Those districts with desegregation may be
those with the most troubled histories, and thus would correlate with lower
achievement outcomes for Blacks but perhaps not for Whites. A desegregation
order also may result in "White flight" from the district, and therefore these
districts may have lower matriculation rates as Whites have higher matriculation
rates on average than Blacks.
We also included control variables for median family income in the
district, dollars spent per student, and the student-teacher ratio. Higher income
levels and expenditures per student are expected to increase rates of college
attendance, while a higher student-teacher ratio is expected to produce less
effective education and to reduce rates of college attendance.
A measure of total district enrollment is included in case larger districts
hire minority faculty at a slightly higher rate (simple correlation of 0.08) and
educate students less capably than do smaller districts, which have fewer
responsibilities and fewer managerial demands.
We also included an interaction term of a southern states dummy variable
with the percentage of minority faculty.^ This interaction term serves as a test of
the role-modeling hypothesis. Because of the legacy of discrimination in the
South, we would expect to see evidence of role modeling by minority teachers on
minority students in this region above all others. If there is no such evidence, then
this would suggest that systemic explanations need to be examined more closely.
Because of this interaction term, we also must include the dummy variable for the
South in the regression model.

Methodology
Data were collected from the 1992 CUBE dataset and the 1990 Census of
the American Population, organized by school districts. The CUBE study is a 62-
city compilation produced triennially by the Council of Urban Boards of

240
 HesslLeal: Minority Teachers, Minority Students, and College Matriculation
Education. It is based on an extensive questionnaire sent to each of the member
school districts. Due to incomplete retums and somewhat ambiguous reporting
procedures, data are not complete for all variables. Five districts failed to answer
so many questions that they were dropped from the analysis. Twelve other
districts did not answer one or two questions, but they were reclaimed via the
technique of substitution at the mean. The Boston school disu^ict, for example, did
not report the student-per-teacher ratio, but it reported data for all other questions.
Therefore, the mean response for all school districts for the student-per-teacher
ratio was substituted for this blank value. This has the value of adding an
observation with 10 true responses and 1 mean response, a reasonable statistical
trade-off. Appendix A lists the schools that were included and those dropped
from the dataset. Descriptive statistics for all variables and the simple correlations
among the independent variables are shown in Appendix B. The model also was
run with these 12 districts excluded, but the results did not change in any
important ways.
The 1994 School District Data Book (National Center for Education
Statistics, 1995) compiled the 1990 census by school district for each of the
nation's approximately 15,000 school districts. These data permit us to use
demographic variables that are coterminous with school district boundaries. Due
to different collection years for the CUBE study and the census, explanatory
variables are for 1989-1990 except for the measure of school district spending,
which is for 1990-1991.
The percentage of students attending college is also taken from the
CUBE data. It is the figure each district submitted for the "percentage of high
school students attending college."
The key explanatory variable, percentage minority of district teaching
staff, was calculated using figures from the 1992 CUBE study. We added together
all non-White full-time equivalent faculty and then divided that sum by each
district's total FTE faculty.
The data were analyzed using ordinary least squares regression (OLS)
because the dependent variable is continuous.

Results
The fully specified model explaining college matriculation is:

COLLEGE MATRICULATION% = a + j3i MEDIAN INCOME

+ P2 %MINORITY STAFF -»- Ps %LATINO STUDENTS
+ P4 %BLACK STUDENTS + P5 TOTAL ENROLLMENT
+ P6 DOLLARS PER STUDENT + P7 %BOARD MINORITY
+ Ps STUDENTS PER TEACHER -»- % SOUTH
+ P10 SOUTH*MINORITYSTAFF-i- PH DESEGREGATION + e

This model (summarized in Table 1) explained just over one-third of the

variance for the 57 districts under consideration. Districts with a higher
percentage of minority faculty had a significantly higher rate of college
matriculation, after controlling for student ethnicity, local demographics, and
other relevant school system variables. Increasing the minority percentage of a
school district faculty by 10% increased the college matriculation rate by 3.6% {p
< 05), a very strong relationship.

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Policy Studies Journal, 25:2

Table 1
Model on College Matriculation

Coefticient
Variables (SE)
Constant 0.629 —
(0.224)
Percent minority faculty 0.359-
(0.149)
Median income 8.77e-06*
(4.55e-06)
Percent Black students -0.476***
(0.165)
Percent Latino students -0.095
(0.143)
Total enrollment 1.25e-O4
(in thousands) (1.02e-(>4)
Dollars spent per student -3.57e-06
(1.68e-05)
Percent minority members -0.065
of school board (0.115)
Student per teacher ratio -0.010
(0.008)
South dummy 0.192*
(0.078)
Interaction of South and -0.323*
percent minority faculty (0.167)
Desegregation order dummy 0.041
(0.053)
Adjusted R^ 0.35
Observations 57

Sources: Council of Urban Boards of Education 1992 school district survey; 1990 United States
Census.
Notes: * p<.\0,** p< .05 *** p <.O1.

Concems are unjustified that the significance of faculty ethnicity is an

analytic artifact produced by collinearity with student ethnicity. The likelihood
that faculty ethnicity is associated with a statistically significant improvement in
college matriculation is p < ,05, even after controlling for percentage Black
students and percentage Latino students. In fact, rerunning the model without the
variable for faculty ethnicity produces an adjusted R^ value of about 0.28, which is
a statistically significant drop from the fully specified model.
Interestingly, in the South, minority staff appeared to have almost no
positive effect on student college attendance. Whereas a 10% increase in minority
faculty in the rest of the United States is associated with a 3.6% increase in
college matriculation, the outcome in the South for a similar 10% change is an
increase of only 0.4% in the matriculation rate. The positive value associated with

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 HesslLeal: Minority Teachers, Minority Students, and College Matriculation
more minority staff was canceled out almost entirely by the effect of the
interaction variable. We suggest two explanations for this finding.
We believe the most likely hypothesis is that high percentages of
minority faculty in the rest of the nation are evidence of reform efforts or similar
attempts to diversify the school system, whereas the presence of minority teachers
in the South does not signify district-initiated reform efforts. In the South,
minority teachers may be evidence of judicially required integration, or they may
have been in the system because of the historic existence of a separate Black
school system. Neither of these possibilities may be correlated with district-
initiated efforts to improve student outcomes. A second hypothesis is that, due to
a history of discrimination in the South, minority teachers are less effective at
classroom instruction than they are in the rest of the nation.
The problem these results present for the role-modeling hypothesis is that
the presence of minority teachers is associated with very impressive overall
district improvements, even though their impact is hypothesized to be on only one
segment of the student population. Further, because all minority teachers are
included in the variable, the ethnicity-matching implied by the role-modeling
hypothesis is experienced by only a segment of the minority student population. It
is possible theoretically that the college achievement variable is driven largely by
minority students, but this would have to be a large gain by the 15% of sample
students who are Latino and the 32% who are Black to drive the findings. This
seems less believable than the alternative of across-the-board gains, particularly
because the same-race role-modeling hypothesis would predict that a minority
teacher would affect only one or the other student population. This means that a
same-race teacher would have to be extremely effective with students of his or her
own race, and no less effective than average with students of other races, to
produce the observed gains.
We believe the finding on differential effects in the South is consistent
with the structural hypotheses. Considering the South's history of discrimination,
role modeling might be expected to have a stronger effect in the South than
elsewhere. This is because students growing up in an environment with such a
long history of discrimination should be more responsive to role modeling than
are other students. The fact that the effect of minority faculty is weaker in the
South suggests role-modeling explanations may be incomplete or flawed.
The above discussion suggests that the argument that minority teachers
significantly improve minority student performance is incomplete. We maintain
that what little research currently exists on the effect of minority faculty may be
mistaken in its conclusions in support of the role-modeling hypothesis. This
hypothesis is in doubt because it could be explained by the systemic hypothesis
discussed previously.
The effect on the matriculation levels of the districts' entire student
population, then, could be due to either: (a) the structural hypothesis, in which
districts that hire more ethnic faculty are sending more students to college because
of the previously suggested four theories; or (b) the role-modeling hypothesis, in
which ethnic faculty are doing a better job of educating students of their own
ethnicity.
Other variables subject to school district control, besides faculty makeup,
were per-pupil spending and student-teacher ratios. Neither of these variables had
a significant effect on matriculation.
As expected, the median income of a school district was associated
positively with college attendance. Also, the larger the percentage of Black
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Policy Studies Journal, 25:2
students, the fewer students overall go to college, although this does not hold true
for Latino students. The size of the school district, the historical or contemporary
existence of a desegregation plan, and the percentage of minority school board
members had no impact in the model. The dummy variable for the South is
significant and positive, which is a little surprising, but perhaps not so in light of
the comparatively low college tuition for southem state educational institutions.

Conclusions
The educational literature long has presumed that hiring more minority
teachers will improve minority student academic performance. In this article, we
present for the first time systematic evidence that the percentage of minority
faculty has a significantly positive effect on college attendance among the overall
student population. In other words, after controlling for the Black and Latino
percentage of district students, minority faculty percentage was statistically
significant and significantly improved the model's explained variance. This
relationship also held after controlling for median family income and student-
teacher ratios.
These results provide broad-based empirical evidence for the role-
modeling hypothesis commonly found in the education literature. It is also
possible, however, that other, more systemic, effects may fit data believed to be
consistent with this hypothesis. Evidence for this latter possibility is that the
effect of minority teachers actually is reduced greatly in the South, whereas a
legacy of discrimination suggests that this is the one region where role-modeling
effects should be the largest.
Another problem is that the presence of minority teachers is associated
with overall district improvements, even though their impact is hypothesized to be
on only one segment of the student population. It is possible that the college
achievement variable is driven largely by minority students, but this would have to
be a large gain by the 15% of sample students who are Latino and the 32% who
are Black in order to drive the findings. This seems less believable than the
alternative of across-the-board gains, particularly because the same-race role-
modeling hypothesis would predict that a minority teacher would affect only one
student population. This means that a same-race teacher would have to be
extremely effective with students of his or her own race, and no less effective than
average with students of other races, in order to produce the observed gains.
These findings have important substantive implications. A sole reliance
by education reformers on the role-modeling hypothesis argued by Fraga et al.
(1986) and others might lead to incorrect policy remedies. If it is system behavior
that is causing both more minority hiring and higher rates of college matriculation,
then it is those behaviors that should be examined and emulated. A remedy that
focuses on hiring minority faculty may mistake a spurious effect for a cause, and
may consume scarce urban school district resources that could aid students more
effectively.
Role-modeling and systemic effects, however, most likely are jointly
present in urban school districts, and reform efforts may have to taJce both into
account. It is not possible to be certain of this, however, because this is the first
attempt to explore the systemic hypothesis. Clearly, more research is needed in
this important policy area to determine the relative importance of these causal

244
 HesslLeal: Minority Teachers, Minority Students, and College Matriculation
explanations, and thereby to facilitate the development of effective remedies to
increase urban student academic performance.

Frederick M. Hess is director of the Center for Educational Policy in the

Ctirry School of Education, an assistant professor of education, and an assistant
professor (by courtesty) of govemment at the University of Virginia.
David L. Leal is an assistant professor of political science at the State
Univesity of New York at Buffalo.

Notes
The data used in this study are available from the Inier-university Consortium for Political
and Social Research, at the University of Michigan.
The names of the authors appear in alphabetical order.
The CUBE study is a 62-city compilation produced triennially by the Council. It is based
on an extensive questionnaire sent to each of the member school districts. A list of the responding
cities is found in Appendix A.
•^For instance, Alexander and Eckland (1975) found that student contact with teachers and
counselors regarding college plans had no apparent consequences in terms of actual student plans to
attend college.
An example of this is in Alexander and Eckland (1975), who found that one of the direct
determinants of college plans among high school students is the curriculum in which sophomores were
enrolled. Urban districts working to improve student performance very well might try to enhance
curricula and encourage students to participate in more challenging programs, while working to
diversify and pursue new faculty.
Unfortunately, districts simply reported an aggregate college attendance rate, so it is not
possible to examine whether minority faculty have a different effect on minority than on White student
performance. Obviously, that is a crucial question for testing the role modeling hypothesis, but it
cannot be addressed with the available data.
There are other ways to construct this variable. One approach would look at each ethnic
minority as an independent percentage of the distria's faculty, which would have examined the impact
of ethnic faculty of a specific race. However, this still does not address the question of whether any
apparent effects produced by same-race faculty simply are the product of causally prior institutional
forces.
Southem states have a higher percentage of minority teachers than do other regions; the
correlation of the South with minority faculty percentage was 0.25. lliis is not surprising, given the
history of race relations in the South, particularly the historic existence of a separate Black school
system, as well as more recent desegregaticHi requirements.

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 HesslLeal: Minority Teachers, Minority Students, and College Matriculation

Appendix A
Cities Participating in the CUBE Study

Akron Miami
Albuquerque Milwatikee
Anchorage Montgomery
Atlanta New York
Bakersfield Norfolk
Baltimore Oakland
Boston Orlando
Bridgeport Philadelphia
Chicago Phoenix
Cincinnati Pittsburgh
Cleveland Portland
Columbia Providence
Dallas Raleigh
Dayton Reno
Denver San Bernardino
Des Moines Savannah
Detroit South Bend
Ft. Lauderdale Springfield
Gary St. Louis
Huntington Syracuse
Indianapolis Tacoma
Jackson Tampa
Jacksonville Toledo
Laredo Tucson
Las Vegas Tulsa
Lincoln Virginia Beach
Long Beach Washington, DC
Memphis Wichita
Mesa

Note: Five observations were deleted due to extensive missing data: the two districts each of Houston
and San Diego and one from Bakersfield.

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Policy Studies Journal, 25:2

Appendix B

Table Bl
Descriptive Statistics for all Variables

Variable Standard
Mean Deviation Minimum Maximum
Proportion college 0.622 0.140 0.35 0.895
matriculation
Median income 26,016.820 5,049.326 14,900 43,900
Proportion minority 0.323 0.229 0.029 0.90
faculty
Proportion black students 0.324 0.237 0 0.905
Proportion Hispanic 0.149 0.194 0.006 0.981
students
Total enrollment 100.486 169.719 6.6 1,194.7
(in thousands)
Dollars spent per 5,450.737 1,289.504 3,226 8,481
student
Proportion minority of 0.596 0.236 0 1
school board
Students per teacher 18.291 2.684 11 26
South dummy 0.281 0.453 0 1
Interaction of South and 0.116 0.227 0 0.876
proportion minority
faculty
Desegretation order 0.852 0.349 0 1
dummy

Table B2
Simple Correlations of Independent Variables
Mcdinc MinFac HisStu BlacStu Enroll DolStu Brdrace Teacher Interact South Dcseg
Medinc 1.000
MinFac -0.413 1.000
HisSai -0.204 0.149 1.000
BlacStu -0.373 0.665 -0.385 1.000
EnroU 0.112 0.083 -0.149 0.111 1.000
DdStu -0.041 -0.039 -0.143 0.266 0.252 1.000
Brdrace -0.444 -0.6% -0.324 -0.524 -0.145 O021 1.000
Teadier -0.289 -0.183 0.242 -0.319 -0.071 -0.468 -0.026 1.000
Interact -0.119 0.522 0.150 -0.176 -0.050 -0.251 -0.193 -0.216 1.000
South 0.138 0.251 -0.011 0.113 -0.015 -0.234 0.046 -0.186 0.826 1.000
Dcseg -0.1% -0.034 -0.239 0.264 -0.203 0172 0.121 -0.141 0.006 0.138 1.000

Note: Medinc is median income; MinFac is proportion minority faculty; HisStu is proportion Hisparuc
students; BlacStu is proportion Black students; Enroll is total enrollment; DolStu is dollars spend per
student; Brdrace is proportion minority of school board; Teacher is students per teacher; Interact is
interactio of South and percent minority faculty; South is South dummy; Deseg is desegregation order
dummy.

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