We study the empirical relevance of first impressions in the context of education. We find that teachers who begin their careers in classrooms with large White-Black incoming score differentials carry negative views into evaluations of future cohorts of Black students relative to their White classmates. Our evidence is based on novel data on blind evaluations and non-blind public school teacher assessments of fourth and fifth graders. Teachers’ perceptions are particularly sensitive to relatively low-performing Black students in early classrooms, but not to relatively high-performing Black students. Since teacher expectations can shape grading patterns and sorting into academic tracks as well as students’ own beliefs and behaviors, these findings suggest an important link between specific novice teachers’ initial experiences and the persistence of racial gaps in educational achievement and attainment.

Bio: Marcos A. Rangel is an economist and associate professor with the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and a research scholar at the Duke Population Research Institute (DUPRI). His work focuses on the patterns of accumulation of human capital with particular attention to the intra-family decision process (parents and children), to the impact of policies that influence health, fertility, education, and associated racial disparities. His research has contributed to a better understanding of how educational attainment of children and family fertility decisions are influenced by both the negotiations between mothers and fathers and by the ways in which families insert themselves into societies, particularly in Brazil and other Latin American settings. He focuses on the innovative use of data to infer causal effects of policies and to identify main theoretical mechanisms which help inform policy making. Before joining Duke, Rangel has held positions at Princeton University, at the University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), and at the University of Chicago. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).