There is a lot of data on how race and income impact educational performance, and about how teacher identity and quality influences those gaps. For Black students, having just one Black teacher in early education lowers the high school dropout rate by 50%, and having two Black teachers lowers the rate by 75%. Yet, only 7% of teachers identify as Black--but the percentage of Black students is double that. Also, notably, many Black students report never having a Black teacher. In this episode Professor Constance Lindsay, Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Education and author of Teacher Diversity and Student Success: Why Racial Representation Matters in the Classroom joins the show to discuss these statistics and the policy proposals made in the book.