Student Demographics, Teacher Sorting and Teacher Quality: Evidence from the End of School Desegregation
Abstract
The reshuffling of students due to the end of student busing in Charlotte-Mecklenburg provides a unique opportunity to investigate the relationship between changes in student attributes and changes in teacher quality that is not confounded with changes in school or neighborhood characteristics. Comparisons of OLS and IV results suggest that the spatial correlation between teachers’ residences, students’ residences and schools could lead to spurious correlation between student attributes and teacher characteristics. The reshuffling of students led to teacher re-sorting so that schools that experienced a repatriation of black students experienced a decrease in various measures of teacher quality (including estimated value-added). I provide evidence that this is primarily due to a labor supply response.
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