Education

Why did we include this measure?

It is widely agreed that these academic subjects are important. Increases in test scores, especially math and reading, cause increases in a wide variety of other long-term life outcomes, including earnings and employment. We focus specifically on eighth-grade NAEP scores because this is a pivotal grade/age for children's education and it is feasible to include essentially all students, even if they eventually drop out of school. Eighth-grade scores also reflect the accumulation of knowledge from earlier ages and grades. (We note that test score levels cannot be compared across subjects. For example, we cannot say that our math levels are higher than our reading levels.)

Why did we include this measure?

Test scores only capture some of the knowledge and skills we expect of young people. But students' motivation to learn and work hard, the ability to collaborate with and get along with others, and the wherewithal to persist through difficulties (sometimes now called "grit") are also important. Years of education is a useful signal of these "soft skills." By staying in school longer, students also engage in activities that help them improve on these dimensions. This is apparently why, when researchers look at the life outcomes of people who have the same test scores, the ones with more years of education have better outcomes on a wide range of measures, including earnings, employment, happiness, civic participation, life expectancy, and other measures of health. However, concern has arisen in recent years that the same level of education no longer reflects the same level of skill and knowledge, due to grade inflation and reduced standards. While the research on this is unsettled, it is still clear that students are learning useful skills and knowledge as they pass through the education system.

Formal education usually focuses on general skills, but our measure of years of education also includes more job- and career-oriented skills that are taught in community colleges and involve certificates in addition to academic degrees. There is increasing interest in alternative credentials, such as competency-based programs and digital badges, which place less focus on classroom time and let students progress and receive credentials based on whether they have demonstrated knowledge or experience in a particular area. These credentials are not yet very common or well-measured so while we are forced to omit them, we intend to include them in future reports when the data become available.

Why did we include this measure?

Formal education is not the only way to develop knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Workplace skills, for example, are learned on the job. Therefore, we also report the percentage of young adults who are either enrolled in a formal education program or working (or both). Those who are neither working nor in school are sometimes called "disconnected" from opportunity.

Another reason for focusing on this measure is that formal education is usually completed by the time people reach their mid-20s, and the prior measure (average years of education) focuses on the population aged 25 to 54. This measure of employed-or-in-school stops instead at age 24 and provides a better sense of the experiences of current young adults who will make up the majority of the workforce in the decades ahead.