Schooling and higher education

  • Do youth mentoring programs change the perspectives and improve the life opportunities of at-risk youth?

    While most effects are positive, they tend to be modest and fade over time—in addition, some mentoring programs can backfire

    Mentoring programs such as Big Brothers Big Sisters of America have been providing positive role models and building social skills for more than a century. However, most formal mentoring programs are relatively novel and researchers have only recently begun to rigorously evaluate their impact on changing at-risk youth’s perspectives and providing opportunities for them to achieve better life outcomes. While a variety of mentoring and counseling programs have emerged around the world in recent years, knowledge of their effectiveness remains incomplete.
    MoreLess
  • Is the return to education the same for everybody?

    While a four-year college degree is financially beneficial for most people, it is not necessarily the best option for everyone

    Douglas Webber, October 2014
    A postsecondary degree is often held up as the one sure path to financial success. But is that true regardless of institutional quality, discipline studied, or individual characteristics? Is a college degree always worth the cost? Students deciding whether to invest in college and what field to study may be making the most important financial decision of their lives. The return to education varies greatly by institutional quality, discipline, and individual characteristics. Estimating the returns for as many options as possible, and making that information as transparent as possible, are paramount in helping prospective students make the best decision.
    MoreLess
  • The promises and pitfalls of universal early education

    Universal early education can be beneficial, and more so for the poor, but quality matters

    Elizabeth U. Cascio, January 2015
    There is widespread interest in universal early education, both to promote child development and to support maternal employment. Positive long-term findings from small-scale early education interventions for low-income children in the US have greatly influenced the public discussion. However, such findings may be of limited value for policymakers considering larger-scale, more widely accessible programs. Instead, the best insight into the potential impacts of universal early education comes from analysis of these programs themselves, operating at scale. This growing research base suggests that universal early education can benefit both children and families, but quality matters.
    MoreLess
  • Impact of bilingual education on student achievement

    Language development programs should focus on quality rather than the language in which instruction is provided

    Aimee Chin, March 2015
    More than 4.4 million students enrolled in US public schools participate in English language learner programs because of linguistic barriers to learning in regular classrooms. Whether native language instruction should be used in these programs is a contentious issue. Recent studies, using credible research designs for estimating causal impacts, find that bilingual education programs (which use some native language instruction) and English-only programs are not significantly different in their impact on standardized test performance. This finding suggests that it is time to change the focus from use of the native language to program quality.
    MoreLess
  • Migrants and educational achievement gaps

    Avoiding segregation and compensating for parental disadvantage can reduce migrants’ educational achievement gaps

    Horst Entorf, April 2015
    As global migration flows increase, so do the number of migrant students in host country schools. Yet migrants’ achievement scores lag well behind those of their native-born schoolmates. Performance gaps are explained largely by differences in migrant parents’ socio-economic background, cultural capital, and language skills. Education policy needs to focus on language teaching, parental involvement, diversity training, and beneficial social interaction between immigrant and native-born populations. With the wealth of many industrialized countries threatened by a lack of qualified labor, education of immigrants should be an important priority.
    MoreLess
show more