Is the gender gap in school performance affected by the sex of the teacher? |
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Authors: | Helena Holmlund Krister Sund |
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Institution: | 1. Program on Education Policy & Governance, Harvard University, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Taubman 327, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States;2. University of Arkansas, 204 Graduate Education Building, Department of Education Reform, Fayetteville, AR 72701, United States\n;3. University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, 1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway, Colorado Springs, CO 80918, United States\n;1. University of Warwick, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland;2. Hebrew University, Israel;3. NBER, United States of America;4. Bank of Israel, Israel |
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Abstract: | Girls outperform boys in school. We investigate whether the gender performance gap can be attributed to the fact that the teacher profession is female dominated, that is, is there a causal effect on student outcomes from having a same-sex teacher? Using data on upper-secondary school students and their teachers from the municipality of Stockholm, Sweden, we find that the gender performance differential is larger in subjects where the share of female teachers is higher. We argue, however, that this effect can not be interpreted as causal, mainly due to teacher selection into different subjects and non-random student-teacher matching. Exploring the fact that teacher turnover and student mobility give rise to variation in teacher's gender within student and subject, we estimate the effect on student outcomes of changing to a teacher of the same sex. We find no strong support for our initial hypothesis that a same-sex teacher improves student outcomes. |
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