Educating More Americans Requires Broader View of Learning

Abstract

America as the most educated country in the world? When President Obama set this as a goal of his Administration--based on every American completing at least one year of college--the pronouncement sounded familiar. Less than 20 years ago, the first President Bush and the nation's governors, meeting at an Education Summit in Charlottesville, declared that our students would be the best in the world in math and science by the year 2000. They didn't even come close. But who was going to set a goal for being second or third in the world? Their goal was more PR than policy making, and the college-for-all ambition of the current Administration could ring just as hollow. I suspect, however, that the current goal is a proxy for ensuring that we become a smarter society, on average, than in the past. Giving everyone some college experience is one way of defining a more capable workforce and citizenry, and undoubtedly millions of adults would benefit from it. Helping adults learn computer and research skills or take responsibility for learning independently could increase productivity at work. For many young people, however, the message that you must go to college is an incentive to do just the opposite. As evidence of this, the high school dropout rate stubbornly stays the same even as young people experience the highest unemployment rate since the U.S. Department of Labor started keeping track more than 40 years ago. The message from policy makers that hasn't been heard by these students, and by many of those who try to educate them, is that there is a good economic life for those who graduate from high school with some connections to careers immediately after high school. Their future lies not in another spate of traditional classwork leading to a two-year degree, but in jobs with specific training. Changes in the workplace and education are shaping a hopeful path for students scared by the college-ready craze. Assembling the Pieces There are several pieces to put together to show how this is happening. For 15 years, MDRC conducted random-assignment research on career academies in a diverse group of high schools, following students for eight years after graduation. Career academies, now numbering about 2,500 across the country, organize students into small learning communities around career themes and develop partnerships with employers for apprenticeships and other job training. Students' academic scores don't soar because they're in the academies, but students tend to graduate at higher rates, find stable employment, and earn more than comparison groups (like $30,000 more over eight years). Those with the best results tend to be minority men in urban areas. CNA and the Hudson Institute followed more than 144,000 students through high school and into postsecondary education for 12 years, beginning in 1995. As other studies confirm, higher levels of education produce higher earnings, with one important exception: Students who complete certificates from two-year colleges have about the same median earnings as those who receive associate degrees. Researchers concluded that obtaining a certificate significantly increases the earnings of low-performing high school students relative to students with similar records who attend college but do not obtain a credential. …