Black Students: Do They Need Black Teachers?

Black Students: Do They Need Black Teachers?: Do black students need black teachers to be successful? Does it help, as conventional wisdom suggests? Not necessarily, according to new research by Walter Hunt, a recent graduate of the University of Houston's Executive Education Doctorate in Professional Leadership program. But taken in the context of other research on race and education, the results are a little more nuanced, as the Huffington Post reports.

The conclusion: Black (and Latino) teachers' ability to relate to students hinges on all other factors being equal. And that "all other factors being equal" bit simply draws attention back to the origins of the achievement gap itself: