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 are not confounded with changes in school or neighborhood characteristics. Comparisons of ordinary least squares and instrumental variable results suggest that spatial correlation between teachers’ residences, students’ residences, and schools could lead to spurious correlation between student attributes and teacher characteristics. Schools that experienced a repatriation of black students experienced a decrease in various measures of teacher quality. I provide evidence that this was primarily due to changes in labor supply.