Teacher-Child Racial/Ethnic Match and Parental Engagement With Head Start

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early-Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

The 1998 and 2007 Head Start reauthorizations each mandated that Head Start programs raise the educational levels of their teachers. In the years since, the Head Start workforce has changed substantially; between 1999 and the present, the percentage of Head Start teachers with a Bachelor’s degree more than tripled from 23 to 73 percent (Bassok, 2013; Whitebrook, Phillips, & Howes, 2014). Over the same time, the racial composition of Head Start has also shifted; the percentage of white lead teachers increased by 10% from 2006 to 2011, with no corresponding increase in white Head Start enrollees, resulting in increased racial mismatch between teachers and students (Bassok, 2013).

This whitening of the teacher labor force is a potentially important unintended consequence of efforts to raise quality in Head Start. Previous research suggests that there may be a benefit to child-teacher racial match in early care settings, both in terms of academic achievement (Dee, 2004; Downer et al., 2016), and teacher ratings of children’s academic and social development (Bates & Glick, 2013; Downer et al., 2016; Downey & Pribesh, 2004). Moreover, some argue that the educational system’s inability to close achievement gaps draws, in part, from cultural mismatch between educators and families of color (Downey & Pribesh, 2004; Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010).

To date, however, we lack evidence as to whether this heightened lack of alignment in the demographic composition of Head Start families and teachers might matter for children and families. In response to recent evidence that parental involvement in Head Start centers is an important driver of children’s developmental gains (Ansari & Gershoff, 2016), the present study probes the association between racial match between Head Start families and teachers and parental involvement.

Conclusions and Implications
Over the past 20 years the Head Start workforce has become more highly educated, but it has also become whiter, and this demographic shift in the composition of its workforce has not been mirrored in the children Head Start serves. The present study suggests that this reduction in racial/ethnic parity between the Head Start workforce and the children and families it serves could reduce parents’ engagement with Head Start and ultimately undermine both components of Head Start’s two-generation mission. Future research should consider the broader impacts of policies designed to make large scale changes to the ECE workforce, and endeavor to find strategies that are able to boost the efficacy of ECE teachers while retaining the features of the workforce that build relationships with parents.

Author

• Anna J Markowitz, University of Virginia