Dee, Thomas S. 2007. “Teachers and the Gender Gaps in Student Achievement.” Journal of Human Resources 42(3): 528–554.
A prominent class of explanations for the gender gaps in student outcomes focuses on the interactions between students and teachers. In this study, I examine whether assignment to a same-gender teacher influences student achievement, teacher perceptions of student performance, and student engagement. This study’s identification strategy exploits a unique matched-pairs feature of a major longitudinal study, which provides contemporaneous data on student outcomes in two different subjects. Within-student comparisons indicate that assignment to a same-gender teacher significantly improves the achievement of both girls and boys as well as teacher perceptions of student performance and student engagement with the teacher’s subject.
Thomas S. Dee is an associate professor of economics and Director of the Program in Public Policy at Swarthmore College and a Faculty Research Fellow, NBER. This research was supported by the Spencer Foundation and by a grant from the American Educational Research Association which receives funds for its AERA Grants Program from the National Science Foundation and the National Center for Education Statistics of the Institute of Education Sciences (U.S. Department of Education) under NSF Grant #REC-0310268. Opinions reflect those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the granting agencies. The author would also like to thank the referees and seminar participants at Stanford University, the College of William and Mary and Drexel University for helpful comments. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning January 2008 through December 2010 from Thomas S. Dee, 500 College Avenue, Department of Economics, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081 dee@swarthmore.edu.