Kirabo Jackson Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
C. Kirabo Jackson was one of four Northwestern University faculty members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies.
In addition to Jackson, Northwestern's Wendy Griswold, James L. Mahoney, and Sara A. Solla are among this year’s class of 261 artists, scholars, scientists and leaders in the public, nonprofit and private sectors. The Class of 2022 includes everyone from novelist Salman Rushdie and physicist Gabriel Kotliar to mRNA technology pioneers Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman.
Jackson, the Abraham Harris Professor of Education and Social Policy with the School of Education and Social Policy, is a labor economist who studies education and social policy issues. He has analyzed several critical 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.
Much of Jackson’s work has focused on better understanding teacher labor markets. Jackson’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.
Jackson, a faculty fellow with the Institute of Policy Research who was recently named editor of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, is the fifth member of the SESP community to be elected to this esteemed group. He joins previous winners Larry Hedges, Board of Trustees Professor of Statistics; Carol Lee, professor emeritus of learning sciences and education; and Doug Medin professor emeritus of education and psychology and James Spillane, the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Professor in Learning and Organizational Change.
The Academy was founded in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin and others who believed the new republic should honor exceptionally accomplished individuals and engage them in advancing the public good. The Academy’s dual mission remains essentially the same 240 years later with honorees from increasingly diverse fields and with the work now focused on the arts and humanities, democracy and justice, education, global affairs and science.