What one Cornell researcher found after the Charlotte-Mecklenberg school district ended race-based busing in 2002 has ominous overtones for Pinellas.

Teachers with more experience and higher certification scores were more likely to leave schools with sudden inflows of black students, found C. Kirabo Jackson, according to a study published in the April edition of the Journal of Labor Economics. (To see the actual study you’ll have to fork over $10 to buy it from the journal. But you can see a summary in this ScienceDaily story.)

Teacher transfer data suggests this may already be happening in Pinellas, as the Gradebook noted last year after this St. Petersburg Times story on teacher transfers.

Hat tip to USF professor Sherman Dorn for noting the Cornell study in this recent blog post. The post also references a new study in the Education Policy Analysis Archives, which Dorn co-edits, which found that young white teachers are more likely to stay in schools with smaller proportions of minority teachers.

- Ron Matus, state education reporter