Featured in U.S. News & World Report
" Do Good Teachers Leave When Black Students Enroll?
" June 5, 2009
Student Demographics, Teacher Sorting, and Teacher Quality: Evidence from the End of School Desegregation
C. Kirabo Jackson
The study  by C. Kirabo Jackson, an associate professor of labor economics at Cornell University, shows that the highest quality teachers in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district left their schools after a long-running busing policy to promote integration was ended. Jackson's study, published in the Journal of Labor Economics, tracked the changes that occurred before and after the busing policy ended between 2002 and 2003. Because the racial makeup of the schools changed suddenly but the neighborhood and economic factors overall stayed the same, the research was able to focus directly on the impact the student body itself had on teacher quality.

Featured in Education Week
"Study Links Teacher Movement to Influx of Black Students" May 27, 2009
Student Demographics, Teacher Sorting, and Teacher Quality: Evidence from the End of School Desegregation
C. Kirabo Jackson
The best teachers tend to leave when their schools experience an influx of African-American students, according to a study of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., school district published today. C. Kirabo Jackson, an associate professor of labor economics at Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., studied patterns of teacher movement in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools between 2002 and 2003, which was when the 137,000-student district ended its long-running policy of busing students to keep schools racially integrated. His results, published in the Journal of Labor Economics, show that, at all levels of schooling, high-quality teachers—both black and white—were more likely to switch schools as the policy change began to take effect and student populations shifted.