My last blog entry dealt with the cost of the educational achievement gap in the United States. But, we also have a college attainment gap when compared to other industrialized countries.
In one generation's time, the U.S. has gone from leading the world in the percentage of adults with college education to 12th in college attainment of young adults 25-34 years of age. Three countries have college attainment rates for young adults above 50%, Canada (55%), Japan (54%) and Korea (53%). Even more troubling is the fact that the U.S. is one of only two industrialized nations that has a higher college attainment rate for older adults (54-64) than for young adults (25-34). So, we're moving in the wrong direction.
President Obama has set the goal of leading the world in adults with college education. At his August 9th speech at U.T. Austin, he reiterated his goal of "producing 8 million more college graduates by 2020 so we can have a higher share of graduates than any other nation on earth," Secretary for Education Arne Duncan has called this effort "the North Star" for the Obama administration's education initiatives.
President Obama calls this push to regain international leadership in college attainment "the economic issue of our time." Why? He made that point very clear, "It's an economic issue when nearly eight in ten new jobs will require workforce training or a higher education by the end of the decade."
Several organizations have developed plans to help the United States reach this goal by 2025. The Lumina Foundation for Education has set the 'big goal' of 60 % of Americans to have 'high-quality degrees and credentials' by 2025. Most other national organizations have set 55% as their target. (View the Lumina Foundation's interactive map to see where your state stands here.)
Either way, it is quite a stretch. To reach the goal of 55% of Americans with a college degree, requires the U.S. to produce 64 million new college degrees, with at least 16 million degrees produced above current levels. So, how might it be done?
Several states have developed strategic plans to reduce the achievement gap and stretch goals for producing more college graduates. Two states have very specific plans for increasing college attainment. Kentucky has set a goal of 'doubling the numbers' of college graduates by 2020. Texas has developed a plan, Closing the Gaps 2015, with a goal of awarding 210,000 certificates and degrees from public universities by 2015.
What impact would raising college attainment levels have on the U.S. economy? According to CEOs for Cities, simply raising the college attainment rate in the 51 largest cities in America by 1% would yield a 'talent dividend' of $124 billion. Raising it 10% would produce $1.2 trillion!
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board projects that if the state successfully meets its plans, by 2030, it will reap increases in $489 billion in spending, $194 billion in gross state product, and $122 billion in personal income, as well as 1 million new jobs. Similarly, Kentucky projects that if it reaches it goals by 2020, it will increase personal income by $159 billion and and state tax revenue by $9 billion.
Most states have already developed plans to increase high school graduation rates and college completion rates. However, to reach a 55% college attainment rate by 2025 will also require strategies to attract working adults back to college to earn a degrees. According to a report by the Council on Adult and Experiential Learning, 32 states cannot meet the targets by solely relying on the traditional college-age population. Moreover, even if every state reached 'best-case scenarios' in improving high school graduation rates and college completion rates, America would still be a little over 3 million short of the 64 million new degrees required to hit the 55% target.
According to projections by National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, by 2025, two states (Texas and California) would need to produce over a million new degree holders over and above current degree production levels. This is conceivable with a broad strategy that includes both traditional K-16 pathways (such as improved achievement levels, reduced dropout rates, rigorous curricula, improved college readiness, and improvements in college graduation rates) along with plans to addresses the educational needs of working adults.
In Texas, for example, only 29% of all Texas have an associates degree or higher. Over 2 million Texans lack a high school degree (21.6% of all adults). In 2000, more than one million Texans had never completed the 9th grade. Over 2.5 million Texans have some college, but no degree. Clearly, helping adults obtain high school and college degrees must be a part of plans for increasing the percentage of adults with college degrees.
If community colleges and four-year institutions can attract less than half of that 2.5 million to return to college and to earn a degree, that would produce 1 million more Texans with a college degree. Similarly, if Texas was to get 50% of adults with less than a 9th grade education to earn their GED, followed by a college certificate or associate of arts degree, that would yield another half million Texans with some college education.
Several organizations have made recommendations to help the United States increase college attainment. The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers are working towards a common framework for national standards for high school graduation reflecting college and career readiness. Not all states signed on (Alaska and Texas, for example, have not), but most are joining the effort.
The Educational Trust promotes efforts in K-12 to reduce the achievement gap between whites and nonwhites and has expanded those efforts in higher education. Recently, it has joined force with 24 public university systems to cut the college-going and graduation gaps for low-income and minority students in half by 2015, producing a report to show progress of major public universities.
The College Board has issued a "Completion Agenda," with ten recommendations: 1) provide voluntary preschool education, universally available to children from low-income families; 2) improve middle and high school college counseling; 3) implement the best research-based dropout prevention; 4) align the K-12 education system with international standards and college admission expectations; 5) improve teacher quality and focus on recruitment and retention; 6) clarify and simply the admission process; 7) provide more need-based grant aid, while simplifying financial aid processes; 8) keep college affordable; 9) dramatically increase completion rates; and, finally, 10) provide post-secondary opportunities as an essential element of adult education programs.
Meeting the President's call to regain national leadership in college attainment will not be easy. But, it is essential for the future of America. As President Obama stated, "Countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow." Those whom we educate today, may be the innovators of tomorrow. America must invest in its future.
All over the country, organizations and universities are engaged in discussions of how we can rise to the challenge. In my next blog post I will give examples of what we are doing at the University of Houston-Downtown.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
America's Future Depends on Eliminating the Education Achievement Gap
A severe crisis looms in the horizon. I'm not talking about the federal deficit. Rather, I refer to a pending shortfall in workers with the skill-sets and degrees that America needs for innovation and global competitiveness.
America is falling behind in educating its citizenry. We have two very serious problems: an achievement gap (how well students learn, perform on standardized tests, and progress through high school and college) and an attainment gap (the percent of young adults who earn high school degrees, certificates, and college degrees). Neither is easily fixed.
Middle class and upper-middle class white students outperform their working class peers. Similarly, white students as a whole outperform minorities, particularly African Americans and Latinos. The gap is severest in poor, urban, and predominantly minority communities. Urban schools are more likely to be dilapidated, deteriorating, overcrowded, and more likely to have new and often non-certified teachers. See data here.
It is not uncommon for minority children in urban schools to enter the 6th grade one or two years behind their grade level. This is especially true for limited-English students who must learn English as well as subject matter. Minority and low income students are more likely to drop out of high school and are less likely to attend college. They are more likely to require adult basic education, ESL, and secondary adult education, and more likely to require remediation when they do attend college.
Latinos represent the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, accounting for roughly half of all new births. Latinos, most of whom are native born U.S. citizens, already represent a majority of the K-12 population in many of this country's largest school district and are becoming a larger share of the U.S. high school and traditional college-age population. By 2020, nearly 10 million Latinos will be 15-24 years of age, accounting for nearly one-fourth of the U.S. total U.S. traditional college age population.
Unfortunately, Latinos are among the least likely to graduate from high school, among the least prepared for college, are more likely to require remediation, and less likely to graduate from college within six years of graduation from high school. In fact, only about 30% of Latino young adults (25-34) have attained an associates degree or higher, compared to 43% of African Americans and 81% of whites.
According to a report of the Alliance for Excellence in Education, a single dropout in 2008 cost the U.S. economy $260,000 in lost earnings, taxes, and productivity. If all those students who dropped out of high school in the class of 2008, had instead graduated, it is estimated that the U.S. would gain $319 billion in wages, taxes, and productivity.
The achievement gap of Latinos, African Americans and poor whites costs America billions of dollars in remediation, lost incomes, revenues and GDP. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education projects that if the U.S. doesn't eliminate the achievement gap, U.S. productivity could decline by 50%, with a total loss of personal income of roughly $400 billion.
According to a recent report by the McKinsey Quarterly entitled "Economic Cost of the U.S. Education Gap," the educational achievement gap cost the U.S. nearly $2 trillion just in 2008. The McKinsey report found that the effect of the academic achievement gap on U.S. GDP was worse than the last three recessions combined, including the current recession! So, eliminating the achievement gap is essential to America's future.
How about the attainment gap? The U.S. is tenth internationally in college attainment (the number of adults with an associates arts degree or higher). Canada leads the world in the percentage of adults with some college education (with 55% of Canadian adults with some college). Similarly, the U.S. is 23rd in high school graduation rates. The U.S. ranks 17th in the world in production of scientists and engineers, which are key to creation of knowledge and technology jobs. Only about 35% of U.S. young adults (25-34) hold a college degree compared to roughly 50% of the same age cohort in Japan and Korea.
Worse, the U.S. is one of only two industrialized nations where older adults (45-54 years of age) are more likely to have attained a college degree than young adults (25-34 years of age). By 2020, the percentage of adults with college degrees will be less than it was in 2000. The only category to increase in percentage will be high school dropouts.
Ironically, U.S. students trail their European and Asian counterparts in achievement on international tests. So, we also have an international achievement gap. According to an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), when compared with students in 30 OECD countries, 15 year-old American students ranked 18th in science, 24th in math and problem solving, and fifteenth in reading.
President Obama has set a target that "America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates..." The National Governors Association, the Education Trust, Lumina Foundation, the College Board have all joined efforts to help reach that target by 2025. However, if we do not close the achievement gap, America cannot regain its leadership position in the proportion of adults with college education and degrees.
China already leads the United States in the number of college graduates it produces (as does India). But, we are also falling behind economic growth rates and in some other measures of economic performance. By June 2011, China is projected to pass the U.S. in manufacturing output and value. By 2050, unless we do something about it, China will pass the U.S. in total GDP.
America clearly faces a crisis. We must make it a priority to improve the quality and performance of schools and students and to increase the number of young adults who earn college certificates and degrees. To ignore the looming crisis risks America's economic and social well-being. It also diminishes our ability to compete internationally. While it may cost us to address this problem, it will cost us more to ignore it.
View my entire PowerPoint presentation with slides and references here.
America is falling behind in educating its citizenry. We have two very serious problems: an achievement gap (how well students learn, perform on standardized tests, and progress through high school and college) and an attainment gap (the percent of young adults who earn high school degrees, certificates, and college degrees). Neither is easily fixed.
Middle class and upper-middle class white students outperform their working class peers. Similarly, white students as a whole outperform minorities, particularly African Americans and Latinos. The gap is severest in poor, urban, and predominantly minority communities. Urban schools are more likely to be dilapidated, deteriorating, overcrowded, and more likely to have new and often non-certified teachers. See data here.
It is not uncommon for minority children in urban schools to enter the 6th grade one or two years behind their grade level. This is especially true for limited-English students who must learn English as well as subject matter. Minority and low income students are more likely to drop out of high school and are less likely to attend college. They are more likely to require adult basic education, ESL, and secondary adult education, and more likely to require remediation when they do attend college.
Latinos represent the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, accounting for roughly half of all new births. Latinos, most of whom are native born U.S. citizens, already represent a majority of the K-12 population in many of this country's largest school district and are becoming a larger share of the U.S. high school and traditional college-age population. By 2020, nearly 10 million Latinos will be 15-24 years of age, accounting for nearly one-fourth of the U.S. total U.S. traditional college age population.
Unfortunately, Latinos are among the least likely to graduate from high school, among the least prepared for college, are more likely to require remediation, and less likely to graduate from college within six years of graduation from high school. In fact, only about 30% of Latino young adults (25-34) have attained an associates degree or higher, compared to 43% of African Americans and 81% of whites.
According to a report of the Alliance for Excellence in Education, a single dropout in 2008 cost the U.S. economy $260,000 in lost earnings, taxes, and productivity. If all those students who dropped out of high school in the class of 2008, had instead graduated, it is estimated that the U.S. would gain $319 billion in wages, taxes, and productivity.
The achievement gap of Latinos, African Americans and poor whites costs America billions of dollars in remediation, lost incomes, revenues and GDP. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education projects that if the U.S. doesn't eliminate the achievement gap, U.S. productivity could decline by 50%, with a total loss of personal income of roughly $400 billion.
According to a recent report by the McKinsey Quarterly entitled "Economic Cost of the U.S. Education Gap," the educational achievement gap cost the U.S. nearly $2 trillion just in 2008. The McKinsey report found that the effect of the academic achievement gap on U.S. GDP was worse than the last three recessions combined, including the current recession! So, eliminating the achievement gap is essential to America's future.
How about the attainment gap? The U.S. is tenth internationally in college attainment (the number of adults with an associates arts degree or higher). Canada leads the world in the percentage of adults with some college education (with 55% of Canadian adults with some college). Similarly, the U.S. is 23rd in high school graduation rates. The U.S. ranks 17th in the world in production of scientists and engineers, which are key to creation of knowledge and technology jobs. Only about 35% of U.S. young adults (25-34) hold a college degree compared to roughly 50% of the same age cohort in Japan and Korea.
Worse, the U.S. is one of only two industrialized nations where older adults (45-54 years of age) are more likely to have attained a college degree than young adults (25-34 years of age). By 2020, the percentage of adults with college degrees will be less than it was in 2000. The only category to increase in percentage will be high school dropouts.
Ironically, U.S. students trail their European and Asian counterparts in achievement on international tests. So, we also have an international achievement gap. According to an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), when compared with students in 30 OECD countries, 15 year-old American students ranked 18th in science, 24th in math and problem solving, and fifteenth in reading.
President Obama has set a target that "America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates..." The National Governors Association, the Education Trust, Lumina Foundation, the College Board have all joined efforts to help reach that target by 2025. However, if we do not close the achievement gap, America cannot regain its leadership position in the proportion of adults with college education and degrees.
China already leads the United States in the number of college graduates it produces (as does India). But, we are also falling behind economic growth rates and in some other measures of economic performance. By June 2011, China is projected to pass the U.S. in manufacturing output and value. By 2050, unless we do something about it, China will pass the U.S. in total GDP.
America clearly faces a crisis. We must make it a priority to improve the quality and performance of schools and students and to increase the number of young adults who earn college certificates and degrees. To ignore the looming crisis risks America's economic and social well-being. It also diminishes our ability to compete internationally. While it may cost us to address this problem, it will cost us more to ignore it.
View my entire PowerPoint presentation with slides and references here.
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