Jason Giersch

Jason Giersch serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte within the College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences. He concurrently holds the position of associate director for the university's Public Policy program.

His research centers on education policy with concentrated expertise in school choice mechanisms, high-stakes testing implications, segregation dynamics, and teacher quality assessment. Complementing this, he investigates how political ideology filters individuals' interpretations of messages across diverse contexts including media and political communication. His methodological approach integrates quantitative analysis with experimental designs, bridging political science, public administration, and educational research frameworks.

Recent publications demonstrate persistent focus on educational inequality through race, gender, and socioeconomic lenses. His work critically examines charter school impacts, segregation patterns, and policy effects on student outcomes while incorporating international comparisons from Finland, Sweden, and Kenya alongside U.S.-centric analyses.

Dr. Giersch actively engages with academic communities through board service for the North Carolina Association for Research in Education and North Carolina Political Science Association. He collaborates with UNC Charlotte's Center for Racial Equity in Education (CREED), notably contributing to discussions on school segregation.

Prior to his university appointment, he accumulated practical experience teaching across public, private, and charter high schools plus college-level instruction in Pennsylvania and Nairobi, Kenya—providing applied perspective to his scholarly work.