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Federal Data on Educational Attainment and the Transition to Work
Pages 122-155

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From page 122...
... Ramey 1992 Child and Family Transitions to School: Measuring Adaptation throughout the Elementary School Years. Paper prepared for the National Center for Education Statistics concerning the Longitudinal Studies Program of Young Children.
From page 123...
... Shonkoff, Jack 1992 The Conceptualization and Measurement of Child and Family Health. Paper pre pared for the Longitudinal Studies Program of Young Children, University of Massachusetts.
From page 124...
... While it may be too harsh to claim that the lack of useful data has led to bad policy, there can be little question that timely, accurate, and relevant data on children and families have the capacity to inform public policy, particularly federal policies directed at the lives of children. In this paper, I examine federal data on an important dimension of children's well-being: children's progress through school and into the labor force.
From page 125...
... I suggest, therefore, a need for a set of data collection mechanisms that balance data on individuals and on institutions. THE DEMAND FOR INFORMATION ON EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT AND THE TRANSITION INTO THE LABOR FORCE In this section I briefly review some of the major policy questions posed at the federal level that concern educational attainment and the transition into the labor force.
From page 126...
... " is an example of an analytic policy question, and a carefully controlled study comparing the unemployment rates of program participants and similar nonparticipants is an example of the data that might be used to address this question. Educational Attainment I begin by examining some of the key policy questions regarding educational attainment.
From page 127...
... Goal 2 states: "By the year 2000, the high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90 percent." The two additional objectives associated with Goal 2 state: "The nation must dramatically reduce its dropout rate, and 75 percent of those students who do drop out will successfully complete a high school degree or its equivalent" and "The gap in high school graduation rates between American students from minority backgrounds and their non-minority counterparts will be eliminated." Although the National Education Goals are surprisingly silent on participation in postsecondary schooling, there nevertheless are a host of longstanding descriptive policy concerns about access to and completion of postsecondary schooling. This is particularly true in light of the longstanding federal role in financing higher education.
From page 128...
... The applied analytic policy concerns at the secondary level pertain primarily to the evaluation of specific policies and programs designed to influence the high school graduation rate, and in addition to understanding the unanticipated consequences of other educational and social programs for the high school graduation rate. For example, the focus of the school reform movement of the 1980s was the attempt to raise standards for student performance -- by increasing high school graduation requirements, implementing high-stakes exit tests, and increasing student workloads.
From page 129...
... Classroom reward and evaluation systems, the organization of instruction into homogeneous ability groups and agegraded classrooms, grade retention policies, school size, and curricula all represent factors at least partly amenable to policy manipulation that might have consequences for whether young people complete their high school educations. At the postsecondary level, the central analytic questions concern the intertwining of families, work, and postsecondary schooling.
From page 130...
... In this view, skill supply and demand is among the most important policy considerations in the transition into the labor force. But this view takes skill or ability as a relatively fixed feature of individuals independent of their learning contexts, and thus assumes that the skill, ability, and learning demonstrated in school can readily transfer to the workplace.
From page 131...
... Analytic Policy Questions Many of the important analytic policy questions regarding the transition to work view the youth labor market in the context of its connections to other social institutions, particularly schooling, families, and communities. Thus, attention is directed to what might be called the school-to-work transition system, or the "linkage" system joining schooling and the economy.
From page 132...
... The transition to work often is viewed in the context of specific communities, because the youth labor market is not a national market, but rather a local one. Thus, local community conditions -- e.g., the kinds of social dislocations defined by weakened social institutions that William Julius Wilson has written about in The Truly Disadvantaged (1987)
From page 133...
... I include in this description major data collection activities carried out by or sponsored by federal government agencies, such as the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey and the Longitudinal Studies Program of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
From page 134...
... Over its 53-year history it has been the primary source for perhaps the most prominent indicator of the health of the American economy, the seasonally adjusted monthly unemployment rate. The CPS also produces data on the characteristics of the labor force, including the number and characteristics of individuals who are employed, unemployed, or not in the labor force.
From page 135...
... ranges from 17,000 1976, 1979 and 1986 records from respondents' experience; attitudes and values students in base year to high schools; postsecondary 12,000 students in fifth transcripts follow-up High School and Nationally representative Base-year survey in Student questionnaires; Family background; school Beyond (HS&B) sample of 30,000 high 1980; follow-up cognitive test battery in experiences; educational and school sophomores and surveys for both cohorts base year and first occupational plans; work 28,000 high school seniors in 1982, 1984, and follow-up; base-year experience; postsecondary EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT AND THE TRANSITION TO WORK enrolled in more than 1986; follow-up survey parent and teacher schooling; attitudes and values; 1,000 public and private for sophomore cohort questionnaires; high family formation schools in 1980 in 1992 school administrator and teacher survey; postsecondary education transcripts continued on next page 133
From page 136...
... in 1996, with parent questionnaire perceptions; school policies and possibility of one or in base year and practices; curriculum content two additional follow- second follow-up; ups at two-year school questionnaires; intervals teacher questionnaires; dropout questionnaires Beginning Nationally representative Base-year survey in Student questionnaires; Family background and financial Postsecondary sample of 7,000 students 1989-90; follow-up National Postsecondary data; postsecondary schooling and Study (BPS) entering postsecondary survey in 1992; Student Aid Study employment experiences, including schooling in 1989-90 scheduled follow-ups at (NPSAS:90)
From page 137...
... formation; child care; child cognitive and socioemotional development Panel Study of Income National sample of Base-year interview in Respondent interviews Sources of income; employment Dynamics (PSID) approximately 8,000 1968; annual and earnings histories; family households, beginning in reinterviews composition; household 1968 expenditures; housing; child care information; disability and illness; job search strategies; retirement plans and experience; savings patterns; standardized test performance EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT AND THE TRANSITION TO WORK 135
From page 138...
... argue persuasively that the meaning of educational attainment had changed sufficiently over this period to make the old item misleading. The CPS data also are used to provide estimates of the national high school dropout rate.
From page 139...
... Subject to variations in question wording and survey procedures, the CPS data provide a consistent data series for broad trends in the schooling and work accomplishments of youth. The CPS data are not as useful for addressing policy concerns targeted at specific subpopulations, such as minority youth.
From page 140...
... The NCES National Longitudinal Studies Program For more than two decades, NCES has been conducting longitudinal studies of large, nationally representative samples of school-age youth. The National Longitudinal Studies Program has been an important resource for the analysis of students' experiences as they move through secondary school and into early adulthood.
From page 141...
... . NCES has also begun two longitudinal studies focusing on participation in postsecondary education: the Beginning Postsecondary Student Longitudinal Study (BPS)
From page 142...
... The senior cohort thus has been followed from approximately age 18 to age 24, whereas the sophomore cohort has been followed from approximately age 16 to age 28. The HS&B study was designed to facilitate comparisons with NLS-72, and in fact there have been a series of analytic studies comparing the experiences of both the sophomore cohort and the senior cohort with the cohort of high school seniors in NLS-72 (see, e.g., Ekstrom et al., 1988; Alexander et al., 1987)
From page 143...
... There have been a number of supplemental data collections carried out under the auspices of HS&B, including the Postsecondary Education Transcript Study of the senior cohort in 1984 and a similar study of the sophomore cohort scheduled for 1993 (Davis and Sonnenberg, 1993)
From page 144...
... The parent questionnaire emphasized family background information, including parental status measures and parental involvement in and knowledge about their child's schooling; the teacher questionnaire examined teachers' perceptions of the sampled student's academic performance and personal qualities, the curriculum content of the courses they taught, and their background and beliefs about their work environment. In addition to the student questionnaire and cognitive test battery, the first follow-up also included a school questionnaire (as many students changed schools in moving from the 8th grade to the 10th grade)
From page 145...
... As a consequence, NCES has initiated the Beginning Postsecondary Longitudinal Study (BPS) , a study of a large, nationally representative cohort of students beginning postsecondary education.
From page 146...
... Thus, the BPS study is not likely to be an important resource for understanding the labor force careers of current enrollees in postsecondary schooling. However, because sample members will be followed even if they leave postsecondary schooling early in the life of the study, BPS may be especially useful in monitoring the early labor market experiences of those postsecondary students who enter the labor force upon completion of 2-year postsecondary programs or other programs of limited duration.
From page 147...
... As with its predecessors, it is a longitudinal study of the labor market experiences of a nationally representative cohort of individuals, in this case more than 12,000 noninstitutionalized civilian and military youth ages 14 to 21 in 1979. The survey oversampled black, Hispanic, and low-income white youth and has had extremely high response rates in the base year and subsequent follow-ups.
From page 148...
... is a longitudinal study of families begun in 1968. The study has followed both the original families interviewed in 1968 and "split-off" families formed by individuals in those original families who subsequently left home and formed new families.
From page 149...
... SUMMARY STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE AVAILABLE DATA Perhaps the most important point that one can make regarding the available sources of data on educational attainment and the transition into the labor force is that it is hard to characterize these data sources as a system. The data collections are administered by different agencies, each with its own substantive foci, and little thought has been given to how these differing data collections fit together or where the key redundancies and gaps might lie.
From page 150...
... Because student learning is frequently correlated with students' schooling experiences and also is related to educational outcomes, the failure to take measured cognitive performance into account can lead to upwardly biased estimates of the effects of schooling experiences on such outcomes such as educational attainment. For example, the fact that youth who have been retained in grade in their primary or secondary school careers are more likely to drop out of school than those who have not does not necessarily imply that grade retention "causes" dropping out.
From page 151...
... While I am not inclined to argue that any of the datasets reviewed earlier gather data too frequently, I do believe that there are instances in which the data collections are not frequent enough to allow for the meaningful monitoring of trends in educational attainment and the transition to work. In a context of relatively rapid educational reform and economic change, it may be desirable to address questions about high school completion, postsecondary access and persistence, and youth labor market experience as frequently as every two to three years.
From page 152...
... Many of the important policy questions in the areas of educational attainment and youth employment pertain to the effectiveness of specific policies and programs. For example, we want to know what works in dropout prevention
From page 153...
... The answer is, only a little. The broad federal statistical data collections that function as indicator systems are not a substitute for program evaluation.
From page 154...
... Second, given the designs and sample sizes of most of the data collections reviewed here, subpopulations that are relatively rare in the population are unlikely to be studied reliably without substantial oversampling. Minority racial or ethnic group members, language minority youth, and disabled youth represent relatively small shares of the youth population and thus may not be represented in study samples in sufficient numbers to estimate their experiences reliably.
From page 155...
... There seems to be a need for an oversight body that can rise above the individual and sometimes competing interests of particular agencies and shape a federal data system that is responsive to the full spectrum of policy concerns about children and youth, particularly those concerns that cross traditional agency boundaries. These are some possible action steps, but I am uneasy about concluding this paper without questioning one of the fundamental assumptions that undergirds it and the workshop for which it was prepared.


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