Effects of ethnicity and gender on teachers’ evaluation of students’ spoken responses

To update and extend research on teachers ’ expectations of students of different sociocultural groups, 57 Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic teachers were asked to evaluate responses spoken by Black, White, and Hispanic 2nd-and 3rd-grade boys and girls. The results show that responses perceived as spoken by minority boys, minority girls, and White boys were evaluated less favorably than identically worded responses perceived as spoken by White girls. This suggests that teachers hold relatively low expectations of minority students and of boys. Teachers of all sociocultural groups evidenced such expectations, but Black and Hispanic teachers more strongly. Keywords low expectations, achievement gap, race, language Year after year, the achievement gap between ethnic minority students and their White peers remains a disturbing reality in U.S. schools. In 2008, Black and Hispanic students scored an average of 25 points lower in reading and 23 points lower in math than their White peers (U.S. Department of Education, 2009).