For a three-year time period beginning in 2001, North Carolina awarded an annual bonus of $1,800 to certified math, science and special education teachers working in high poverty or academically failing public secondary schools. Using longitudinal data on teachers, we estimate hazard models that...

The effect of interracial contact in public schools on the enrollment of whites has been an important concern in assessments of desegregation since the 1970s. It has been feared that 'white flight' -- meaning exit from or avoidance of racially mixed public schools -- could undermine the racial...

Using data from yearbooks for 194 high schools, this study examines the degree of interracial contact in 8,875 high school teams and other organizations. Tabulations show that the degree of interracial exposure was typically less than what would occur if all organizations in each school had been...

This paper presents measures of segregation in public schools for metropolitan areas. It shows that, not only are metropolitan areas very segregated, most of that segregation is due to racial disparities between districts rather than segregative patterns within districts. Metropolitan areas in...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the predicted effects of tax reform in the 1980s (the tax acts of 1981 and 1986) on charitable contributions by individuals and to compare them to the actual and apparent effects, viewed from the perspective of 1989. The paper discusses what the economic...

Using detailed data from North Carolina, we examine the frequency, incidence, and consequences of teacher absences in public schools, as well as the impact of an absence disincentive policy. The incidence of teacher absences is regressive: schools in the poorest quartile averaged almost one...

We use data on statewide end-of-course tests in North Carolina to examine the relationship between teacher credentials and student achievement at the high school level. The availability of test scores in multiple subjects for each student permits us to estimate a model with student fixed...

Education researchers and policy makers agree that teachers differ in terms of quality and that quality matters for student achievement. Despite prodigious amounts of research, however, debate still persists about the causal relationship between specific teacher credentials and student...

Using data for North Carolina public school students in grades 3 to 8, we examine achievement gaps between white students and students from other racial and ethnic groups. We focus on successive cohorts of students who stay in the state's public schools for all six years, and study both...

We use administrative data on North Carolina public schools to document the tendency for more highly qualified teachers to be matched with more advantaged students, and we measure the bias this pattern generates in estimates of the impacts of various teacher qualifications on student...