Category Archives: Education

The Dropout Problem and What Can Be Done About It

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The Wall Street Journal recently released some staggering statistics: less than 40% of Americans over age 25 with less than a high school diploma are employed, and those who are employed make about $23,400 on average. Another report by the National Center for Family and Marriage Research indicates that about a third of young men with less than a high school degree have had contact with the criminal justice system. While there is often controversy as to how dropout rates should be measured, the Future of Children volume America’s High Schools points out that even the most optimistic figures suggest that too many students are leaving school early.

Authors John H. Tyler and Magnus Lofstrom in their chapter on “Finishing High School: Alternative Pathways and Dropout Recovery” point out that while much is known about the characteristics of students who do not complete high school, much less is known about the reasons why. A student’s decision to drop out of school, say the authors, is affected by a number of complex factors including student characteristics such as poor school performance and engagement, school characteristics related to school resources and student-teacher ratios, and family characteristics such as parent socioeconomic status and family structure.

Due to the wide range of factors associated with dropout rates, some communities are pushing for a more comprehensive prevention approach. PBS NewsHour reports that in Washington, D.C., individual success stories will be advertised at bus stops and on radio commercials – efforts by a truancy task force created by health and family services and law enforcement agencies. In disciplining students who skip school many communities are placing greater emphasis on counseling, parenting classes, and community service and less exposure to the criminal justice system. Evaluating the effectiveness of these and other prevention efforts is important. As the Future of Children volume America’s High Schools indicates, although hundreds of dropout prevention programs exist, very little evidence has been collected regarding their effectiveness.

To combat the dropout problem, in his State of the Union President Obama urged states to require all students to stay in school until they graduate or turn 18. In response to President Obama’s call, Senior Editor of the Future of Children Cecilia Rouse coauthored a New York Times piece suggesting that while President Obama’s efforts are a step in the right direction, the most effective solutions should begin much earlier. “Rigorous evidence gathered over decades suggests that some of the most promising approaches need to start (early); preschool for 3- and 4- year-olds, who are fed and taught in small groups, followed up with home visits by teachers and with group meetings of parents; reducing class size in the early grades; and increasing teacher salaries from kindergarten through 12th grade.”

Read more about programs for improving outcomes among adolescents and young adults in the Future of Children volumes School Readiness, Transition to Adulthood and Juvenile Justice.

Education for Homeless Children and Youth

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In The Next Generation of Antipoverty Policies, the Future of Children author Richard J. Murnane explains that the American ideal of equal educational opportunity for all children is not often the reality. According to the America’s Youngest Outcasts 2010 report, one group for whom this may be especially true is the 1.6 million children and youth (1 in 45) who experience homelessness each year.

Homelessness and other forms of housing instability such as doubling up and frequent moving can be traumatic experiences for children. Families are often forced to split up or move into shelters with chaotic and unsafe environments. For the 42% of homeless children who are age six or under, these early experiences may have negative effects on development and school readiness. The barriers young children in disadvantaged circumstances face, as well as policy recommendations for improving school readiness are discussed in the Future of Children volume School Readiness.

For homeless children already enrolled in school, a review of the literature reveals lower levels of school attendance and achievement when compared to other low-income children. They are also more likely to be placed in special education classes, score lower on standardized tests, and be asked to repeat a grade. Moreover, 75% of homeless or runaway youth have dropped out or will drop out of school. The Future of Children volumes America’s High Schools and The Next Generation of Antipoverty Policies discuss ways to prevent dropout and improve the education of children living in poverty.

In 2002, the federal government reauthorized the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act in an effort to remediate educational barriers for homeless children. The Act allows children and youth who do not have a fixed, adequate, and regular nighttime residence to immediately enroll in school and to receive services such as free transportation to either their school of origin or local school, immediate special education, and free school meals without an application.

While the McKinney-Vento Act is definitely a huge step toward equal educational opportunity, it is not enough to bring down many of the barriers homeless children face. During the recession years, the number of families at risk of experiencing homelessness increased, putting greater pressure on this issue. At this year’s National Conference for the Institute for Children, Poverty, & Homelessness, researchers and practitioners met to exchange ideas for educating homeless students and improving the circumstances of their families. A common theme at the conference was the importance of collaboration and community partnerships.

For information on homelessness and housing insecurity among Fragile Families see Fragile Families research briefs. Also see the Future of Children volume on Fragile Families and other volumes on the Future of Children website: http://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/.

The True Cost of High School Dropouts

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In an Op.Ed. in the New York Times yesterday, Future of Children Senior Editor Cecilia Rouse and Columbia’s Henry M. Levin explain that although President Obama’s announcement regarding compulsory education until graduation or age 18 is a step in the right direction, evidence suggests that more effective prevention efforts begin much earlier than high school. Click here to read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/opinion/the-true-cost-of-high-school-dropouts.html?_r=1.

Raising Our ‘Standards for Teaching and Learning’

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In his State of the Union Address, President Obama declared, “To prepare for the jobs of tomorrow, our commitment to skills and education has to start earlier. We’ve convinced nearly every State in the country to raise their standards for teaching and learning – the first time that’s happened in a generation.” He then presented three aims for raising our standards in education: effective teachers, high school completion, and affordable college tuition.

Effective Teachers. President Obama emphasized the role of teachers in the lives of their students. He called on states to extend resources to schools for rewarding the most effective teachers. The Future of Children volume Excellence in the Classroom explains that high quality education is crucial for the wellbeing of children and our nation. Thus, advocates recommend that teacher-improvement policies ultimately be examined in terms of their influence on student performance.

High School Completion. To increase high school completion rates, President Obama called on states to require all students to stay in school until they graduate or turn 18. The Future of Children volume America’s High Schools explains that dropping out of high school places burdens on students themselves and on society. Students experience lower earnings as well as higher risk of unemployment and health issues. Society faces higher crime rates and greater spending on public assistance. Successful dropout prevention programs focus on family outreach and resolving the issues students face outside of school.

Affordable College Tuition. To get more young people through college, President Obama urged Congress to extend the tuition tax credit, he called on states to make higher education more of a priority, and he asked colleges and universities to keep tuition costs down. The Future of Children volume Transition to Adulthood highlights successful programs for increasing college enrollment and completion. As indicated in a previous Future of Children blog, programs designed to simplify the financial aid application process have been found to increase college enrollment for families with low to moderate incomes.

As indicated in The Future of Children, several policies and programs have been shown to effectively address the challenges discussed by President Obama, while continued evaluation should examine the effects of other programs. Through a research-based emphasis on effective teachers, high school completion, and affordable college tuition, we can raise our nation’s standards for teaching and learning and provide a brighter future for our children.

Prekindergarten Programs Affected by Recession

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“Children who attend center care or preschool programs enter school more ready to learn, but both the share of children enrolled in these programs and the quality of care they receive differ by race and ethnicity. Black children are more likely to attend preschool than white children, but may experience lower-quality care. Hispanic children are much less likely than white children to attend preschool. The types of preschool that children attend also differ. Both black and Hispanic children are more likely than white children to attend Head Start.” (The Future of Children: School Readiness: Closing Ethnic and Racial Gaps)

Public funding of early childhood care and education, particularly Head Start, has made some progress in reducing ethnic and racial gaps in preschool attendance. Magnuson and Waldfogel, in their chapter in the School Readiness volume of the Future of Children, conclude that “substantial increases in Hispanic and black children’s enrollment in preschool, alone or in combination with increases in preschool quality, have the potential to decrease school readiness gaps.”

Although we know how beneficial it is for children to attend preschool or prekindergarten, the expansion of these programs has slowed down and in some cases has halted or reversed due to budget cuts. “Roughly a quarter of the nation’s 4-year-olds and more than half of 3-year-olds attend no preschool, either public or private. Families who earn about $40,000 to $50,000 annually face the greatest difficulties because they make too much to qualify for many publicly funded programs, but can’t afford private ones, said Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.”

According to Pre-K Now, state moneys for prekindergarten more than doubled nationally to $5.1 billion, while at the same time access increased from a little more than 700,000 children to more than 1 million over the past decade. But in the 2009-10 school year, state budget cuts began affecting the programs.

Despite these challenges, early childhood learning advocates are encouraged by a recent federal emphasis on improving early childhood programs. As noted in the Huffington Post’s piece Public Pre-Kindergarten Programs Slowed, Even Reversed, By Recession, “nine states were awarded a collective $500 million in grants last month to improve access to and the quality of early childhood programs for kids from birth to age 5. A month earlier, President Barak Obama announced new rules under which lower-performing Head Start programs will compete for funding,” In an effort to improve the quality of pre-kindergarten programs. (Huffington Post 1/17/12)

For more on education policies that impact children, go to the Future of Children website: www.futureofchildren.org.

Bridging the Gap Between Research and Policy

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New census estimates for counties and school districts indicate that a third of all counties in 2010 had school-age poverty rates that were significantly higher than the national poverty rate. This is one of many statistics about the welfare of U.S. children that compels us to review the supports we currently provide and in the future might provide to children and their families.

But in challenging fiscal times, how do we make decisions about what programs to support?

A major objective of The Future of Children is to translate evidence-based research for policy makers, practitioners, and others working in the field. Although no social science research is perfect, quality research can help policy makers and practitioners better understand what works best for children, and allocate finite resources to meet their needs.

The Obama administration embraces evidence-based programming. But interpreting evidence is often as important as the evidence itself, particularly when the views of policymakers and interest groups may influence interpretations of research outcomes. According to a Future of Children policy brief, the views of policymakers and those in office often outweigh the evidence, and influential interest groups may be more concerned with the people and organizations they serve than with evaluation outcomes.

In a recent presentation for the University-Based Child and Family Policy Consortium, Jon Baron, President of the The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy and Woodrow Wilson School alumnus, spoke about the benefits and challenges of using evidence to inform policy and program development. It is tempting for programs to want to show success and for politicians to want to quickly dismiss what does not work, but is better to create an environment that supports accurate research and allows for program growth over time. Working closely with the Office of Management and Budget, the Coalition uses a two-tiered approach: providing support for programs with the strongest positive evidence from randomized trials, while rigorously evaluating programs with less evidence.

Mr. Baron presented two examples of programs that have yielded positive results among disadvantaged groups, one in the field of education and the other in child health and wellbeing, both of which were featured in Future of Children volumes:

In education, the H&R Block FAFSA Project yielded strong positive effects, according to Mr. Baron. As described in the Future of Children issue Transition to Adulthood and highlighted in a past blog, the goal of the intervention project is to inform low-income families of the financial aid that could be available to them and to help them make informed decisions about whether or not to apply and enroll in college. Findings from randomized experiments show that the program increased college enrollment for low- and moderate-income students by about 26% when compared to the control group.

In child wellbeing, rigorous social science evaluations of home-visiting programs designed to improve parenting and reduce child maltreatment convinced President Barack Obama’s admin­istration to initiate a multi-billion-dollar federal program to expand a particular model of home visiting, the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP). As summarized in The Future of Children’s issue on Preventing Child Maltreatment, in this program, specially trained registered nurses conduct regular home visits to low-income first-time mothers to promote healthy behavior during pregnancy and positive parenting skills.

Key to the success of these and future initiatives is working with policy makers and practitioners to better understand the problems they are trying to solve, their social networks, and the ways by which they acquire, interpret, and use research. The next step is then to effectively translate unbiased research that addresses their questions into information that they can use.

The Future of Children publishes two volumes and policy briefs each year to bring research on various topics about child wellbeing to those working on the frontline. To read our volumes and policy briefs, click here. To view webcasts from some of our outreach events, click here.

Teacher Salary and Student Performance

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In a recent blog, the Future of Children discussed media reports of mediocre student performance in the US, especially in reading. The Future of Children’s School Readiness volume shows evidence of additional performance issues in math, science, and writing, particularly among African American and Hispanic students when compared to whites. The evidence of poor educational quality in many schools, especially urban schools, has led parents and policymakers to demand reform of the US education system. Many argue that one way to increase student performance is through improving teacher quality.

More specifically, some suggest that teacher quality may be improved by raising teacher salaries. In a recent Huffington Post news blog, US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, argues that low salaries among teachers make teaching less appealing, leading many talented and dedicated individuals to avoid teaching as a career, or to leave it upon starting a family or purchasing a home. Another Huffington Post article suggests that budget cuts in many school districts have pushed an increasing number of teachers to take on a second job.

How can we effectively improve teacher quality in the midst of current financial constraints?

Although it seems to make sense that increasing overall teacher pay could make teaching a more attractive profession for top graduates, the Future of Children’s Excellence in the Classroom volume indicates that overall increases in teacher salary would be both an expensive and ineffective solution to improving teacher quality. Instead, the volume recommends that reform focus on restructuring salaries so that teachers are rewarded for specialization and for teaching in less desirable schools. There is some evidence which also suggests that basing teacher wages on student performance may lead to increases in teacher effectiveness; however, more research is needed to better understand the effects of performance-based pay on teacher quality.

Finally, professional development programs that are linked to the curriculum, have substantive content, and can be sustained over time show promise for improving teacher quality, as do coaching and release time for directed collaboration among teachers. But again, more research on these specific programs is needed to determine their effectiveness, as neither graduation course work nor the majority of current professional development programs have been shown to be effective in boosting teacher quality.

For a compilation of past research on this topic, see the Future of Children’s Excellence in the Classroom volume. For current research on the topic, go to Teacher Policy Research, a joint program run in collaboration with Stanford University (with Future of Children Excellence in the Classroom Issue Editor Susanna Loeb), the University of Virginia, and the University at Albany.

Improvements in Math, but Reading is Another Story

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With the dramatic changes that have occurred in education over the past two decades, the US might expect huge improvements in children’s academic achievement. And when looking at math scores, this is exactly what we see: the percentage of proficient fourth graders rose from 13% in 1990 to 40% this year.

However, the November 1st release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores revealed that, as a nation, we have made little progress in the past 20 years in helping our fourth graders read on grade level. Twenty-nine percent of fourth graders were proficient readers in 1992, but by the new millennium this number had only risen three percentage points, and since then it’s only risen two. Reading achievement has remained stagnant since many of the parents of today’s kids were in school.

Why haven’t reading scores improved as they have with math?

According to a New York Times article, one explanation for the slow progress in children’s literacy compared to math is in how reading and math are learned. Math is primarily learned in the classroom, but many of the skills required to become a good reader are generally acquired at home through parent education, time spent reading alone and with parents, communication with parents and caregivers, and more. In the Future of Children’s School Readiness volume, researchers indicate that racial and ethnic gaps in reading can largely be explained by factors like socioeconomic status, the number of books in the home, and parenting.

Last month, the Future of Children invited some of the nation’s top scholars and officials in education, literacy, and child development to meet for a discussion on solutions to the issue of children’s literacy in America. Their research and suggestions for programs and policy will be compiled in the Future of Children’s fall 2012 volume, Literacy of American Children.

The urgency of improving the literacy of American children was a theme throughout the conference. As Robert Slavin, Co-Director of the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk at Johns Hopkins University and Chairman of the Success for All Foundation noted at the conference and in a recent blog, “reading well is a fundamental necessity for learning in all other subjects from math to history, even art. Children who are not reading on grade level simply cannot reach their full potential in any other subject. Economically, this leads to immeasurable loss in untapped potential of our future workforce. Instead of the “keep on keepin’ on” mentality that has yielded predictably flat results for two decades, it is time to do something dramatically different in reading instruction.”

Stay tuned for the Future of Children’s fall 2012 volume on the Literacy of American Children.

Big Bird as Babysitter?

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The American Academy of Pediatrics once again urges parents of infants and toddlers to limit screen-time for their children, says The New York Times; and based on figures in Future of Children’s Children and Electronic Media and reports from the Kaiser Foundation, the timing couldn’t be better: more than three quarters of households with children age six and under have personal computers; nearly a third of children under age two have a television in their bedrooms. With the exception of sleeping, American youth of today spend more time with media than any other activity.

Young children’s increasing media exposure could be catalyzed by other trends. The current economic crisis has pulled hundreds of American homes below the poverty line, and Future of Children’s Work and Family reports that divorce rates, working mothers, and single-parent households are on the rise. In many households, both parents must work to make ends meet, limiting the amount of time parents can spend with their children. Low-wage working parents are the least likely to have the resources and flexible work schedules to be involved with their children.

Findings suggest that the children most affected by these economic changes could be the most at risk of high media exposure. A 2011 nationally representative study of over 1300 parents of children ages 0 to 8, found that children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds spend more time with media and are much more likely to have a TV in their bedroom. As many as 42% of these parents say they sometimes use media to occupy their children while they do chores. Similarly, the Kaiser Foundation found that many parents encourage their children to use media because it gives them a chance to get things done without having to worry about leaving them unsupervised.

What can be done to ensure more positive outcomes for children using new media?

The main lesson learned from the Future of Children’s Children and Electronic Media volume can be captured in one phrase: content matters. Rather than focusing on the type of technology used or how much time is spent with media, parents and policymakers need to focus on what is being offered to children on the various media platforms. In addition, although more research is needed, parents’ co-viewing and mediation can have positive effects on learning from educational media.

As media use plays an increasing role in children’s lives, content selection and parental involvement will become increasingly important. It is critical that parents continue to educate themselves about good media use based on their children’s developmental stages and monitor their children’s media use to ensure that it is healthful and constructive. (See the Children and Electronic Media volume for more on this.)

Children and Electronic Media notes that children under age two benefit more from real-life experiences than they do from video and that too much screen time may lead to childhood obesity and other health problems. However, under appropriate circumstances, technology can be beneficial to children of older ages. Upcoming Future of Children volumes on Children with Disabilities (Spring 2012), Literacy of American Children (Fall 2012), and Postsecondary Education (Spring 2013) will further explore the role of media and technology in children’s learning.

Hispanic Children in Poverty Exceed Whites

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According to a recent report by the Pew Hispanic Center, “More Latino children are living in poverty–6.1 million in 2010–than children of any other racial or ethnic group. This marks the first time in U.S. history that the single largest group of poor children is not white. In 2010, 37.3% of poor children were Latino, 30.5% were white and 26.6% were black.”

Prior to 2007, more white children lived in poverty than Hispanic children. But the Great Recession hit the Hispanic population particularly hard. Poverty rates between 2007 and 2010 increased by 36.3% for Hispanic children. Comparable rates during this time period for whites and blacks increased by 17.6% and 11.7%, respectively.

Of the 6.1 million Latino children living in poverty, more than two-thirds (4.1 million) are the children of immigrant parents. And, as noted in the Future of Children’s Immigrant Children volume and policy brief, a substantial percentage of these children are falling behind in school. More than 5 million, for example, struggle with their academic subjects because they are still learning English.

Evidence shows that three policy reforms -increased attendance in quality preschool, improved instruction in English, and increased attendance in postsecondary education -would improve the school achievement of Hispanic youth, lift their economic wellbeing as adults, and increase their economic and social contributions to American society.

Latin American immigrants arrive in the United States with a strong work ethic and strong family values. By the second generation, their work rates decline, their wage progress appears to slow, and both their nonmarital birth rates and their divorce rates rise. Finding ways to boost achievement and help more Latinos complete high school and attend and complete college or other postsecondary training should be high on the nation’s list of priorities.

As Pew Center Associate Director Mark Hugo Lopez commented in the New York Times “Who [Hispanic children] become will be important for the future of the nation.”

For more specific information about the Future of Children’s recommendations for children of immigrant families, see our Immigrant Children volume.