Sufficiency in Teacher–Student Race Matching

Same-race teachers improve academic outcomes for minoritized students, yet most never encounter a teacher who shares their racial background. Existing research highlights the benefits of race-matched instruction but often focuses on aggregate workforce diversity, obscuring students' structural opportunities for contact. We introduce race-match sufficiency—the probability that a student has at least one same-race teacher—and estimate it using administrative data from 8,691 Texas public schools serving 5.4 million students. We model sufficiency for Black, Hispanic, and white students as a function of racial composition, enrollment, grade structure, district context, and more. Same-race student concentration is the strongest predictor, with steep nonlinear effects varying by race. Secondary grade levels and larger enrollment increase exposure opportunities, but benefits remain profoundly unequal. White students experience near-universal sufficiency, Black students gain moderate access, and Hispanic students remain severely underexposed—even where they constitute over 70% of enrollment. Findings reveal systematic inequities and may support exposure-based staffing strategies.