Abstract:
We use Dutch register data to document the understudied phenomenon of teacher segregation. We show that teachers in primary and secondary schools in the four largest cities of the country – Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht – are segregated in terms of their migration and social backgrounds. While segregation by social background is not much higher than what would be expected under random teacher-school assignment, segregation by migration background is substantial even after accounting for randomness. Relating schools' teacher composition to their student composition, we find in most cases that schools with a high proportion of teachers from a particular background tend to have a high proportion of students from that same background.