Advisor to the White House 

Jackson named to Council of Economic Advisers

Labor economist C. Kirabo Jackson, one of the world’s leading experts on the economics of education and the Abraham Harris Professor of Education and Social Policy, was appointed to the White House’s three-member Council of Economic Advisers.

Jackson has published groundbreaking studies that help educators and policymakers determine what makes one school better than another and the true measure of an exceptional teacher. Using modern methodological tools to reexamine established education policies, he has researched such topics as the importance of school funding on student outcomes, the long-term effects of single-gender education, and how best to determine teachers’ effectiveness.

“At Northwestern, I have expanded the ways I think about questions I’m answering while borrowing from statistics, psychology, and sociology,” says Jackson, who at 43 is one of the youngest members to have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education.

The child of a math professor and a United Nations economist, Jackson knows firsthand how education can change a life’s trajectory. Growing up abroad, he went to private schools in Jamaica, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania before enrolling in a British boarding school. He says that even at a young age he was struck by the disparity between the local children and himself.

“It was clear to me that these were really smart people who had a lot of human potential that just wasn’t realized,” he adds. “As a nation, we want to be investing in individuals so people can realize their skills and their capacities to be as productive as they can be."