Change the Equation Blog

American youth are doing better in school than they did thirty years ago--but better might not be good enough in a fast-changing world. That, it seems, is the hidden storyline of a new (and hefty) report from the US Department of Education.

America's Youth: Transitions to Adulthood traces the progress of young people in areas like school, health, employment and family structure. It outlines big changes over the past three decades.

First, the good news. In contrast to what you may hear, we're actually doing better on the education front. More students are taking tougher courses and going to college. The course-taking trends are downright dramatic. "For example," we learn, "76 percent of 2009 high school graduates had taken algebra II, compared with 40 percent of their 1982 peers. Similarly, 70 percent of graduates in 2009 had taken chemistry, compared with 32 percent of graduates in 1982."

The numbers for college going are almost as striking: "66 percent of male and 74 percent of female high school completers enrolled in college directly after high school in 2009, compared with 47 percent of male and 52 percent of female high school completers in 1980."

As one would hope, students are also doing better on tests, though the numbers for all students are not very dramatic. Between 1982 and 2009, national math scores for 13 year olds rose 12 points from 269 to 281. Among 17 year olds, the rose only 8 points from 298 to 306.

Dig a bit deeper, however, and you'll notice that each demographic group has made bigger gains. White and Hispanic 13 year olds saw scores go up by 16 points. Blacks saw them rise 22 points. Numbers were a bit less dramatic for 17 year olds, but not shabby. Whites gained 10 points, Black students 15 points, and Hispanic students 16 points.

So how can gains for the whole student body be less impressive than gains for individual groups? Groups that have traditionally lagged behind are now a larger share of the whole, which limits the overall gains. That's a sobering reminder that achievement gaps among different racial and ethnic groups still plague us. But the gains in the past three decades are real.

So can we declare victory? Not even close. Even though we're getting more students into college, we've gone from first to 16th in the world in the share of our population aged 25-34 with postsecondary degrees. Even though our students are doing better in math, they still lag behind students in most other developed countries. We've been on the move, but other countries have moved far faster than we have.

And, as yet another new report from Georgetown makes clear, a high school degree doesn't get you nearly as far as it did 30 years ago. The demand for more and better education is oustripping the supply.

The common refrain that US schools are going down the drain is not at all right. It flies in the face of all the gains we have made and does more to demoralize hard-working people than to inspire change. That said, we're not moving nearly fast enough.

We know real change is possible. Now we have to set our minds to picking up the pace.

The demand for skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is hardly limited to Silicon Valley. Maine might not seem like much of a tech hotspot, but The Bangor Daily News (BDN) reports that it faces a real shortage of STEM workers in the coming decades.

The BDN quotes a science and technology specialist in the state's Department of Education who predicts a 50 percent jump in STEM jobs by 2018. Those jobs will probably pay well. A spokesman for the Maine Department of Labor notes that the state's 20,000 (or so) STEM workers get paid "an average of 60 percent higher" than workers in other jobs that require the same education.

Maine also suffers from the same problem that bedevils the rest of the nation: Young people just don't seem to be lining up to seize the opportunities offered by STEM careers. A Dean at the University of Southern Maine sums up a frustration no doubt shared by peers across the country: "When I look at the opportunities out there for students in STEM, I wonder why they are not knocking down our doors."

The BDN story is not all doom and gloom. It outlines several new STEM programs and centers that promise to fuel new interest among students. It also tells the story of York High School, which has made big strides in the past decade:

Instead of instituting a requirement that all students take four years of science and math, Stevens said teachers simply opted to try simple encouragement. The result has been an increase at York High School from one physics class with 20 students to six full physics classes plus an advanced-placement course. Stevens said about 99 percent of York students take physics before they graduate.

It's not clear that other high schools can draw clear lessons from this spare account of York High School's success. Surely, "simple encouragement" isn't all that simple in the end. It requires concrete strategies for getting students invested in STEM for the long haul.

That said, young people across the country seem to face similar opportunities and challenges. Whether in Silicon Valley or Saco, Maine, they have a future in STEM.

There has been a bit of a kerfuffle recently over just how many schools are failing according to No Child Left Behind. (The official, more charitable, phrase is “in need of improvement.”) The Secretary of Education said more than 80 percent would miss the mark. The Center on Education Policy, a DC think tank, looked into the matter and came up with a figure under 50 percent. The exact number may be less important than how we measure school success or failure. This has profound implications for school reform.

The current means of measuring schools' progress in No Child Left Behind, Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), has few friends. Critics charge that it's complicated, statistically unsound and unhinged from reality. Is there a better way to gauge school progress?

Here's at least one possibility: See how well a school does in preparing its students for college. As a new report from the Data Quality Campaign makes clear, more and more states are able to do so. Many states now have the data to track a high school student beyond graduation. Did she enroll in some kind of post-secondary program? Did she need remediation? Did she make it to her second year? Schools want to answer these questions as they try to prepare students for college and careers.

In fact, AYP might have little to do with a school's track record in preparing students for college. A 2010 study of Florida schools found little correlation between a school's success in making AYP and its students' later success in college.

So what should states do with information on their schools' track record with colleges? Should states use it in their accountability systems? If so, how? That's a whole other kettle of fish.

A new report out of Chicago finds that Latinos in that city have hit a "blue collar ceiling" and will face a dim future as long as they lag behind in educational attainment. As goes Chicago, so goes the nation.

According to Crain's Chicago Business Report, the median income for men born in Mexico and working in Chicago is $28,000. It's $47,000 for Mexican men born in the US, which is still a far cry from the $65,000 median income of non-Hispanic white males.

According to The Chicago Tribune, the report finds that education gaps are a major cause of the income gaps. The high school graduation rate for Latino students in Chicago hovers around 57 percent.

This is a tragedy on more than one front. First, these gaps stunt the life prospects of thousands of young people. Second, they present a major economic challenge. The Trib reports that Chicago's Latino population has surged to 22 percent, up from 11 percent a year ago. That's a lot of talent--and earning power--to squander.

Chicago is, of course, a microcosm of the nation as a whole. The nation's Latino population has grown quickly, and it lags in educational attainment. What's worse, Latino students are much less likely than white students to go into science, technology, engineering or math (STEM), which offer high wages and low unemployment.

There is some good news to report. The percentage of Latino students who performed at or above the proficient level in the National Assessment of Educational Progress rose surged 7 to 24 percent between 2000 and 2011. Among 8th graders, it rose from 8 to 20 percent over the same period. Those numbers are still dismal, to be sure, but the positive trend does show that our efforts can pay off.

One thing is clear. We cannot prosper as a nation if we ignore the prospects of a large share of our population. Everyone counts.

Hat tip: Huffington Post.