Main Takeaways
- Research has shown that what teachers believe about a student’s potential has a big effect on how they’ll do.
- Unfortunately, research has also found that most teachers have lower expectations for students of color, even when they have great academic records. This is called the “belief gap.”
- To fight the belief gap, some schools have tried automatically enrolling all students in advanced courses, or making advanced courses requirements for graduation.
- California schools like Impact Academy, Summit Preparatory, and Bravo Magnet have proven that students of color and students from low-income families can succeed when held to high expectations. When we raise our expectations, kids rise to meet them.
How teacher expectations affect students
In 1964, Harvard professor Robert Rosenthal did a famous study on how teacher expectations affect students. At an elementary school in San Francisco, Rosenthal chose students at random. He told their teachers that these students in particular would experience significant growth in their IQ. Then he followed the students and teachers for two years.
I had teachers tell me that it was only once they saw these students succeeding in these classes that they really started to believe it.”
The result? Teachers began to favor those students more. They gave them more time to answer questions. They provided them with more specific feedback. They even smiled and nodded at these students more than the rest. At the end of the two years, although these students didn’t actually have greater IQ potential than the others, Rosenthal’s lie became a reality. These students ended up scoring higher on IQ tests.
Rosenthal’s experiment demonstrated the incredible power of belief. When teachers believe in a student, the student performs better, regardless of their past academic achievement. But the opposite is true as well.
How race affects teachers’ beliefs
Unfortunately, research shows a troubling pattern: teachers tend to believe in white students far more than students of color, even when both students have the same academic record. This phenomenon has come to be known as the “belief gap.” A few examples:
- A 1990s lawsuit in Louisville exposed bias in the school district’s admissions process for advanced courses. When choosing students for advanced courses, teachers and counselors had denied entrance to two-thirds of high-scoring black students. They denied entrance to only one-third of high-scoring white students.
- A 2016 Vanderbilt University study found that in schools with gifted programs, even when black and white students had comparable test scores, black students were about half as likely as white students to be placed on the gifted track.
- In 2017, a New York University study of about 10,000 high school students found that even when researchers controlled for factors like standardized test scores and homework completion, 18 percent of math teachers and 13 percent of English teachers still believed their course was too difficult for their black students. And yet only 8 percent of math teachers and 6 percent of English teachers believed their course was too difficult for their white students. For Latino students, a similar gap existed.
- A 2010 study by the Noyce Foundation also found this problem exists right here in the Bay Area: after studying nine school districts in the Bay Area, they found that out of all the African American and Latino students who were academically qualified to take advanced math classes, only one third were actually promoted to these classes, showing systemic racism at a regional scale.
Many other studies have confirmed these findings. The belief gap helps explain why low-income students and students of color are less likely to enroll in gifted and talented programs. They are also less likely to apply to top colleges, even when they exceed the qualifications for admission (this is often called “undermatching”). The belief gap also explains why schools with mostly students of color often don’t offer any or offer too few advanced courses in the first place: out of high schools that serve the highest percentage of black and Hispanic students, around one quarter don’t offer a second year of algebra.
Sam Johnson remembers seeing the belief gap in action during his three years as San Mateo Union High School District’s superintendent in the early 2000s. When he suggested raising the district’s high school graduation requirements, the school board pushed back.
“To my surprise we had teacher after teacher come to the microphone saying why ‘these kids’ can’t do this,” he recalls. As an African American man who grew up in Louisiana at the height of the civil rights movement, Johnson felt these comments personally. “I finally stood up and said ‘THESE kids can’t do it? That was said about me thirty years ago. And yet here I am.’”
How the belief gap starts
None of this necessarily happens intentionally. In fact, research shows that teachers and school officials are often unaware of their bias, even as they act on it. Researchers call this “implicit bias.” They argue it comes from the cultural and media messages we receive about certain groups of people. Many studies show that teachers begin acting out their implicit biases with students as early as preschool.
In our public school system, where 49 percent of students are students of color yet 82 percent of teachers are white, this issue can greatly influence a student’s academic future.
How to fight the belief gap
We could assume that to change this reality, schools first need to change teacher beliefs about what students can accomplish. However, because teachers often form these beliefs unconsciously, this doesn’t necessarily work. Instead, one of the best ways for schools to fight the belief gap is by making high expectations for all students part of their official policy.
What we believe about kids becomes what kids believe about themselves.”
For example, some school districts have automatically enrolled students in advanced courses. Federal Way Public School district in Washington recently did this with its high-achieving middle and high school students. It led to a 200 percent increase in enrollment in college preparatory classes by students from minority groups.
Many individual charter schools and magnet schools have also made college preparatory courses requirements for graduation. At Bravo Magnet High School in Los Angeles, 90 percent of students come from low-income families and over 90 percent are students of color. Yet in the 2015-2016 school year, 72 percent of students graduated having met California’s A-G requirements, the fifteen high school courses a student must pass with a “C” grade or better to enter a four-year public college in California. 83 percent of Bravo students also took Advanced Placement (AP) courses in the 2014 school year. In an article for LA School Report, their principal, Maria Torres Flores said the school’s success comes from “having a belief system that any student that walks through that door is a Bravo student and they can be successful.”
Here in the Bay Area, other schools have also had success holding students of all backgrounds to high expectations. At Impact Academy in Hayward, 72 percent of students come from low-income families and around 90 percent are students of color. Yet 100 percent graduate having met the A-G requirements. 46 percent of students also take AP classes, compared to 20 percent across the state. Summit Preparatory High School also requires every student to take courses that meet the A-G requirements.They also require every student to take six AP classes and at least one AP test before graduation. Even with such rigorous coursework, California named Summit the third best school in the state for serving students with disabilities.
When we raise the bar, kids rise to that expectation,” says Murray. “It’s the adults that hold kids back.”
Former San Jose Unified School District superintendent Linda Murray found that it was only by raising high school graduation requirements that teacher expectations for students of color began shifting.
“I had teachers tell me that it was only once they saw these students succeeding in these classes that they really started to believe it.”
Individual beliefs are hard to change. That’s why Innovate Public Schools Vice President Amanda Gardner urges schools to focus on what they can control: “The thing that schools have absolute, 100% control over is the quality and rigor of the academic program they offer to kids.”
When schools raise their academic standards, they send a strong message that all students are capable of high-level work, regardless of their background. And as Rosenthal’s study proved, what we believe about kids becomes what kids believe about themselves.
“When we raise the bar, kids rise to that expectation,” says Murray. “It’s the adults that hold kids back.”