Kirabo Jackson, a labor economist who studies education and social policy issues, is Associate Professor of Human Development and social policy at Northwestern University. He was Assistant Professor in the department of labor economics at Cornell University between 2007 and 2010 and then moved to Northwestern, where he subsequently earned tenure in 2012. Kirabo has analyzed several important aspects of education policy such as the importance of public school funding on student outcomes through adulthood, the effects of college-preparatory programs on students' college and labor market outcomes, the effects of educational tracking on students' academic achievement, and the effects of single-sex education on students' academic performance. However, the bulk of Kirabo's work has focused on better understanding teacher labor markets. Kirabo's extensive work on teachers analyzes the role of peer learning in teacher effectiveness, how student demographics directly affect the distribution of teacher quality across schools, how a teacher's effectiveness depends on the schooling context within which they operate, how best to measure teacher quality, and other related topics.
