Reducing Intergenerational Poverty (2024) / Chapter Skim
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4 Children's Education
4 Children's Education
Pages 87-108
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From page 87... ...
Evidence reviewed in this chapter shows that educational outcomes such as years of completed schooling have a strong causal connection with higher earnings and other important measures of life success and well-being, and thus with the ability of children to rise out of poverty when they are adults. There is also a strong association between student achievement -- as measured by test scores -- and labor market outcomes, although in this case it is more difficult to show a causal connection.
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From page 88... ...
It then considers, in turn, four components of the educational process: child care and early education programs for young children; elementary and secondary school; postsecondary education; and, for some, career training. While the chapter focuses on the importance of children's educational experiences for their development, there is a less direct channel that may be even more important in the long run: Educational successes in one generation may affect children of the next generation by influencing parenting practices, helping parents to provide enriching home environments and in other ways support their children's educational experiences (e.g., Currie & Moretti, 2003)
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From page 89... ...
Decades of rigorous labor economics research demonstrate that these earnings advantages are not simply reflections of other differences between graduates and nongraduates. Instead, they largely reflect the labor market rewards generated by the knowledge and skills that students gain as they complete more schooling (Card & Giuliano, 1999)
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From page 90... ...
This appears to be partly because technological change and globalization have increased the productivity of highly educated or highly skilled workers, and partly because of the rising monopoly power of employers in the labor market and the weakening of institutions (such as unions and minimum wage statutes) that traditionally protect workers from such power.
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From page 91... ...
Figure 4-3 shows the fractions of 8th graders of different races and ethnicities judged to be proficient in reading; similar patterns appear in 4th grade and in both 8th and 4th grades for math achievement. Although proficiency rates have increased somewhat for most groups, the rates themselves are very low -- generally around 20% for low-income 1 On average, for-credit community college credentials generate higher labor market rewards than not-for-credit credentials, although both can earn a labor market premium (Baum et al., 2020)
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From page 92... ...
. All of these differences contribute to kindergarten-entry achievement gaps across racial/ethnic groups, as well as to differences in learning throughout the educational process.
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From page 93... ...
The top panel of Figure 4-4 shows rates of fall college enrollment among previous spring high school graduates, while the bottom panel shows the fractions of all young adults (defined here as people between ages 25 and 29) holding college or advanced degrees as of 2019.
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From page 94... ...
NOTES: The top panel shows the share of new high school graduates who are enrolled in college the following fall. The bottom panel shows the share of 25–29-yearolds who had BAs.
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From page 95... ...
. The home visitors offer a wide variety of supports, ranging from facilitating access to public services and modeling positive behavior management to addressing discipline issues to promoting stimulating learning activities and interactions (Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, 2021)
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From page 96... ...
. Children in households living in poverty are more likely than more affluent children to attend struggling public schools that repeatedly fail to meet accountability standards, are burdened by crumbling physical infrastructure and high levels of violence, and are staffed with less experienced, lower-quality teachers (Kozol, 1991, 2005; Lankford et al., 2002)
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From page 97... ...
. One set of studies using national data compared the educational and occupational attainment of students enrolled before and after courts issued desegregation orders in the 1960s and 1970s, and it found that the resulting desegregation improved educational and occupational attainment among Black adults (Johnson, 2011; Johnson & Nazaryan, 2019)
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From page 98... ...
than conventional public schools. However, a subset of charter schools known as "no excuses" schools have been found to have substantial positive effects on students' test scores and 4-year college enrollment, relative to traditional public-school alternatives (Angrist et al., 2016)
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From page 99... ...
POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION Although the bottom panel of Figure 4-4 (above) shows widely disparate rates of college completion across racial/ethnic groups, the top panel shows that the rates of fall college enrollment across different groups of recent high school graduates are more similar.
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From page 100... ...
Among those who aspire to earn a bachelor of arts degree, students starting at 2-year rather than 4-year institutions are less likely to complete their studies. More general differences in postsecondary success are driven by a range of factors, including weaker academic preparation, as a result of having attended lower-quality K–12 schools; a lack of family financial resources and the necessary information for choosing the institution that best suits their needs; the need to work full-time while attending college, making it very difficult to be a full-time student; a lack of social capital and guidance on accessing available resources or studying effectively; and a lack of support services at their current institutions (Baum & McPherson, 2022; Holzer & Baum, 2017)
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From page 101... ...
The first consists of CTE pathways in high schools. The second involves sectoral programs that provide occupational skills training resulting in credentials that are valued by prospective employers in local labor markets.
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From page 102... ...
K–12 Policy and Program Ideas Based on Direct Evidence K–12 Spending in Low-Income School Districts Recent impact studies have found that directing increased school funding at under-resourced districts improves both student achievement and rates of completed schooling, both of which have been linked to reductions in intergenerational poverty (Jackson & Mackevicius, 2021)
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From page 103... ...
That said, the committee felt that the strength of the direct evidence supporting these policies warranted bringing them to the attention of policymakers. K–12 Policy and Program Ideas Based on Indirect Evidence A complementary approach to improving K–12 education outcomes is to focus on specific educational practices and policies that school districts could adopt, given additional resources, to achieve their educational goals.
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From page 104... ...
Postsecondary Education Policy and Program Ideas Based on Direct Evidence Interventions to improve postsecondary attendance and completion for low-income students can focus on the demand side, or institutions of higher education; as well as the supply side, or the students. Interventions focused on higher education might pursue three different goals: 1.
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From page 105... ...
Postsecondary Education Policy and Program Ideas Based on Indirect Evidence Other approaches to help achieve the three broad goals defined above -- but with less rigorous research support to date -- could include these: • Increase maximum Pell awards, with limits imposed on states or institutions regarding offsetting these increases with other cuts in aid; • Provide matching federal funds for state higher education alloca tions, conditional on a maximum tuition threshold and a minimum level of low-SES enrollment; • Expand support for MSIs, which currently raise attainment of col lege degrees but to a lesser degree earnings; • Simplify financial aid applications, which are intrusive and difficult for students and their parents to complete, by limiting the informa tion required to that already collected by the IRS; • Adjust federal aid formulas and the Integrated Postsecondary Edu cation Data System data on specific colleges and programs to provide more information to students applying for admission (for instance, on their "expected family contributions" before they ap ply to college and on required grade point averages in specific institutions if they wish to major in certain fields) ; • Target aid to programs with high labor market value -- through grants to institutions that provide such programs; and • Expand "Gainful Employment" regulations to limit the eligibility for receiving federal student financial aid to attend institutions or programs that show poor outcomes in their graduates' post program earnings and debt-to-income ratios.
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From page 106... ...
The second includes sectoral programs that provide occupational skills training leading to credentials that are valued by prospective employers in local labor markets. High School Career and Technical Education • Provide (through reforms of the federal Perkins Act and by allocat ing additional funds)
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From page 107... ...
This would cost roughly $7.5 billion annually. In addition, the committee suggests considering the following, which would help low-income youth indirectly by raising the incomes in their households (while providing models of labor market success and information on how to achieve success)
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