Taking the Long View of Learning

Abstract

When I was an undergraduate, one of my history professors told the story of an expert lecturing about the fall of the Roman Empire. At the end of the talk, the expert was asked what were the main results of the fall of the Roman Empire. There was a long pause, a worried look, and finally the response--Too soon to say. In some ways, the outcomes of education are like that. When do we know that education has been a success? Surely this happens long after a particular grade or course is completed; most people would say it's a lifetime matter. That's why it's important to analyze what happens to students over the longer term as well, not just their short-term achievement. In the past decade or so, Canada has developed a number of important longitudinal databases related to young people and education. The National Longitudinal Study of Children and Youth has provided important information on children's development from birth to adolescence. The School Leavers Survey traced young people through secondary school and into postsecondary. And more recently, the Youth in Transition Study (YITS) has tracked 30,000 young people from age 15 in 2000 to age 25 in 2010. As an additional feature, the YITS sample also was involved in writing the first round of PISA tests. PISA is OECD's influential Programme for International Student Assessment that assesses 15-year-olds on various lifetime skills. Combining these two data sets has allowed Canada to connect PISA results in reading, mathematics, and science to YITS data on postsecondary education and labor force participation over time. Earlier this year, Human Resources Development Canada and the OECD jointly released Pathways to Success, a report that analyzes the postsecondary education and early labor force activity of these 30,000 young people as of 2006, when they were about 21-years-old, and relates those to their PISA results six years earlier, when they were 15. Several important conclusions arise from this most recent analysis. First, despite a highly diverse population (58% English first language, 22% French, and 20% neither), Canada has high levels of student attainment with lower levels of inequality in outcomes than most countries. Not only are PISA scores very high, but Canada also has well above average participation in postsecondary education; only 20% of 21-year-olds had no involvement in postsecondary education. Also, education outcomes for immigrants are low initially but, after five years, are higher than for those born in Canada. The country is among several (others include Korea, Finland, and Japan) showing that high attainment doesn't have to mean high inequality. Still, one cannot be too self-congratulatory on this count. Canada's performance is better than most countries, but in Canada, too, socioeconomic status continues to be the single most powerful factor shaping education and other life outcomes--even though its impact is only about half of what it is in the United States. Socioeconomic status operates in many ways; income is only part of the story. In the PISA/YITS study, parental expectations for their children are much more influential than is parent's academic interest, supporting other research showing the importance for children's progress of high adult expectations, both at home and at school. PISA literacy scores at age 15 are strongly related to students' education and labor market outcomes at age 21, even after controlling for socioeconomic status and other background variables. In other words, literacy skills have an independent effect on students' lives, even taking into account years of education and school attainment. Literacy skills matter. The implication for schools is that there must be a sustained focus on helping students develop real skills; grades or credits must represent real learning. …