Archive
Minority Turnout Determined the 2012 Election
Minority Turnout Determined the 2012 Election
Source: Brookings Institution
While it may seem like the 2012 presidential election has been analyzed to death, the recent release of the Census Bureau’s November election survey points out the key role that minority voter turnout, especially for blacks, played in determining the outcome.
Until now, most of what we knew came from the National Election Pool exit poll which elicited Election Day candidate preferences of voters. The new, larger survey from the Census Bureau permits an examination of the voting-eligible population and the extent to which they turned out to vote. These turnout rates tell us a lot more about the enthusiasm, or lack thereof, among different groups.
Already, the Census Bureau’s report trumpeted the historically noteworthy finding that black turnout rates in 2012 exceeded that of whites for the first time. This, in an election when white turnout declined significantly and Hispanic and Asian turnout inched down modestly from 2008.
The rising black turnout can be viewed, to some degree, as continued strong support for the first black president. The downturn of white turnout might be attributed, in part, to a lack of enthusiasm for either candidate or politics in general during a sluggish economy.
Time for Change: A New Federal Strategy to Prepare Disadvantaged Students for College
Time for Change: A New Federal Strategy to Prepare Disadvantaged Students for College
Source: Brookings Institution
If more children from low-income families graduated from college, income inequality would fall and economic opportunity would increase. A major barrier to a college education for students from low-income families is that they are poorly prepared to do college work. Since the War on Poverty of the 1960s, the federal government has funded several programs to help prepare disadvantaged students to succeed in college. Evaluations show that these programs are at best only modestly successful. We propose to consolidate these programs into a single grant program, require that funded programs be backed by rigorous evidence, and give the Department of Education the authority and funding to plan a coordinated set of research and demonstration programs to develop and rigorously test several approaches to college preparation.
Should Everyone Go to College?
Should Everyone Go to College?
Source: Brookings Institution
For the past few decades, it has been widely argued that a college degree is a prerequisite to entering the middle class in the United States. Study after study reminds us that higher education is one of the best investments we can make, and President Obama has called it “an economic imperative.” We all know that, on average, college graduates make significantly more money over their lifetimes than those with only a high school education. What gets less attention is the fact that not all college degrees or college graduates are equal. There is enormous variation in the so-called return to education depending on factors such as institution attended, field of study, whether a student graduates, and post-graduation occupation. While the average return to obtaining a college degree is clearly positive, we emphasize that it is not universally so. For certain schools, majors, occupations, and individuals, college may not be a smart investment. By telling all young people that they should go to college no matter what, we are actually doing some of them a disservice.
The Final Countdown: Prospects for Ending Extreme Poverty by 2030
The Final Countdown: Prospects for Ending Extreme Poverty by 2030
Source: Brookings Institution
Over a billion people worldwide live on less than $1.25 a day. But that number is falling. This has given credence to the idea that extreme poverty can be eliminated in a generation. A new study by Brookings researchers examines the prospects for ending extreme poverty by 2030 and the factors that will determine progress toward this goal. The interactive tool below allows users to explore the study’s key findings.
Bending the Curve: Person-Centered Health Care Reform
Bending the Curve: Person-Centered Health Care Reform
Source: Brookings Institution
We propose a framework for health care reform that focuses on supporting person-centered care. With continued innovation toward more personalized care, this is the best way to improve care and health while also bending the curve of health care cost growth.
Our health care system holds great promise. As a result of fundamental breakthroughs in biomedical science, improvements in data systems and network capabilities, and continuing innovation in health care delivery, care is becoming increasingly individualized and prevention-oriented. The best treatment for a patient involves not just specific services covered under traditional approaches to health insurance financing, but also includes new technologies and new kinds of care and support at home and beyond traditional health care settings. These advances require health care providers to work with patients and their caregivers to target increasingly sophisticated treatments and to coordinate care effectively ways that works best for each patient.
Our report’s person-focused reforms aim to support these changes in care—not as an afterthought or as an addition to our health care financing and regulation, but as the core goal. Instead of having to work around fee-for-service (FFS) payments and regulations that can complicate getting the highest-value care in each case, providers and patients will be able to receive more support for the specific approaches to care delivery that can make the most difference. The support comes from aligning reforms in provider payment, benefit design, regulation, and health plan payment and competition. To avoid short-term disruptions, our systematic framework involves a clear path that builds on existing reforms in the public and private sector, supports transitional steps to assist providers, and includes close evaluation and opportunities for adjustments along the way. While our primary goal is better health through better care, we estimate that our reforms would achieve an estimated $300 billion or more in net federal savings in the next decade, and provide a path to sustaining per capita cost growth that is much more in line with per capita growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). After the proposed reforms are implemented in the coming decade, long-term savings from achieving better health and sustainable spending growth will exceed $1 trillion over 20 years. Our proposals can be scaled up or down, and can also be combined with other proposed reforms to achieve additional reductions in health care costs. Our approach enables Congress to focus on overall cost, quality, and access goals that are very difficult to address under current law – so that whatever the spending level, that spending will do more for health.
These issues of health care quality and cost must be addressed. If a clear framework like ours is not implemented, the alternative is likely to be continued reliance on short-term cost controls, including across-the-board cuts in payments like sequestration, or delays and restrictions in both needed coverage updates for vulnerable populations and new types of innovative care—perpetuating large gaps in quality of care.
Our proposals represent an alternative to such care disruptions, cost-shifting, and threats to more innovative, person-focused care. We include proposals for Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurance. We also propose a set of system-wide regulatory reforms and other initiatives, including antitrust and liability reforms. While some of these proposals are specific to particular programs and regulations, they are all grounded in our core goal of supporting quality care resulting in lower cost. This means a clear path for moving away from FFS payments and benefits and open-ended subsidies for insurance plan choices toward a direct focus on supporting better care and lower costs at the person level. Our proposals encompass significant reforms – such as modifications in Medicare payment mechanisms and benefits, and a change in the tax exclusion for employer-provided health insurance. The proposals reflect ideas that have gathered broad support in the past, but also include new approaches for addressing some of their shortcomings. Implementing our reforms together enables them to reinforce each other and create much more momentum for improving care while bending the cost curve.
Twelve Ways to Build Trust in the ICT Global Supply Chain
Twelve Ways to Build Trust in the ICT Global Supply Chain
Source: Brookings Institution
The globalization of commerce and trade has created many benefits. Supply costs have been reduced for many products. Computers and other items can be made of parts from a number of different locales. Countries can specialize in particular goods and companies can focus on the things they do best. Raw materials may come from one area, while manufacturing and production lie elsewhere, and sales and marketing take place in still another place. In this as well as other examples, contemporary commerce involves a complex interchange of hundreds or thousands of individuals, organizations, technologies, and processes across a variety of different continents.
But long supply chains and inadequate or nonexistent product evaluation before deployment, create a situation where widespread vulnerabilities exist in products and networks that can be exploited by others during design, production, delivery, and post-installation servicing. There are industry-wide risks associated with procurement, transportation, and management. Everything from raw materials and natural disasters to market forces, national laws, and political conflict can be problematic. Problems in one area can cascade elsewhere and magnify risks dramatically for the system as a whole.
In this paper, West discusses twelve ways to build trust in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) global supply chain. With the assistance of a group of leading experts brought together at the Brookings Institution in February, 2013 plus follow-up interviews, he explores the operational threats and technological vulnerabilities that we face, and makes recommendations to identify best practices, standards, and third-party assessment for supply chain assurance.
West argues that vulnerabilities in the supply chain and product development, generally, facilitate a myriad of attack and exploitation techniques, such as unauthorized remote access after product deployment for many malicious activities, degradation of ICT networks, and damage to critical infrastructures. West suggests that developing agreed-upon standards, using independent evaluators, setting up systems for certification and accreditation, and having trusted delivery systems will build confidence in the global supply chain as well as the public and private sector networks that sustain them. These and other types of evaluations make information available to purchasers and therefore give them a firmer basis for product selection.
Global Norms as Global Public Goods
Global Norms as Global Public Goods
Source: Brookings Institution
Global public goods is an intriguing concept; it is an extrapolation of public goods, an idea which has been with us for much longer. Public goods are the opposite of private goods. Once available, public goods are available to all, and not just to those who produced it or paid for it. In a further counterintuitive twist, the consumption of a public good does not decrease what is left for anyone else to consume. In other words, when a loaf of bread is available for sale and I buy that loaf of bread, no one else can have that loaf. But if I live in a country with adequate national defense, the fact that I enjoy security does not diminish the security that can be enjoyed by others in the same country, whether they are taxpayers or not. After it was proposed in 1954, the notion of a public good took hold rapidly and spun an extraordinary literature and policy consciousness. As such, global public goods emerged as a pedagogically seamless and tactically fertile iteration on an already well appreciated phenomenon.
Yet, when we move from the traditional conception of public goods to global public goods, we also encounter challenges that defy simple extrapolation. Public goods emerged out of economics, and one way that the economists thought of public goods were as market failure. Markets, which are enviably efficient in allocating resources for private goods, did not work for public goods. Because public goods were things that everyone could and did enjoy, no single person had enough incentive to pay for optimal supply. It was concluded that public goods would ideally be provided by the state, and paid for through taxes; the optimal level of supply would be decided through societal deliberation and the political process. Along the way, public goods became a key justification for the existence of a state. The paradigm example is national defense. As it would be nonsensical to expect individual families or cities to organize or procure defense for themselves, this needed to be done on a national scale. Once provided, everyone benefitted from the security that national defense made possible, and it was logical that that national defense be paid through taxes. Globally, however, we do not have a one-world government, so how shall we organize the provision of global public goods?
Black Carbon and Kerosene Lighting: An Opportunity for Rapid Action on Climate Change and Clean Energy for Development
Source: Brookings Institution
Replacing inefficient kerosene lighting with electric lighting or other clean alternatives can rapidly achieve development and energy access goals, save money and reduce climate warming. Many of the 250 million households that lack reliable access to electricity rely on inefficient and dangerous simple wick lamps and other kerosene-fueled light sources, using 4 to 25 billion liters of kerosene annually to meet basic lighting needs. Kerosene costs can be a significant household expense and subsidies are expensive. New information on kerosene lamp emissions reveals that their climate impacts are substantial. Eliminating current annual black carbon emissions would provide a climate benefit equivalent to 5 gigatons of carbon dioxide reductions over the next 20 years. Robust and low-cost technologies for supplanting simple wick and other kerosene-fueled lamps exist and are easily distributed and scalable. Improving household lighting offers a low-cost opportunity to improve development, cool the climate and reduce costs.
Job Sprawl Stalls: The Great Recession and Metropolitan Employment Location
Job Sprawl Stalls: The Great Recession and Metropolitan Employment Location
Source: Brookings Institution
As policymakers and regional leaders work to grow jobs and connect residents to economic opportunity following the Great Recession, where jobs locate matters. The location of employment within a metro area intersects with a range of policy issues—from transportation to workforce development to regional innovation—that affect a region’s long-term health, prosperity, and social inclusion.
An analysis of the location of private-sector employment within 35 miles of a downtown in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas from 2007 to 2010, and across the 2000s, finds:
Steep employment losses following the Great Recession stalled the steady decentralization of jobs that characterized the early to mid-2000s. After dropping 2 percentage points from 2000 to 2007, the share of metropolitan jobs within 3 miles of downtown stabilized from 2007 to 2010. However, by 2010 nearly twice the share of jobs was located at least 10 miles away from downtown (43 percent) as within 3 miles of downtown (23 percent).
Job losses in industries hit hardest by the downturn, including construction and manufacturing, helped check employment decentralization in the late 2000s. Together, construction, manufacturing, and retail—each among the most decentralized of major industries—accounted for almost 60 percent of all job losses between 2007 and 2010, with half of those losses occurring at least 10 miles from downtown.
In all but nine of the 100 largest metro areas, the share of jobs located within three miles of downtown declined during the 2000s. Only Washington, D.C. experienced an increase in both the number and share of jobs located in the urban core during the 2000s. At the same time, the share of jobs at least 10 miles from downtown rose in 85 regions between 2000 and 2010.
A metro area’s total employment, and policy and planning decisions around land use, economic development, and zoning, help shape the location of its jobs. Employment is more decentralized in metro areas with at least 500,000 jobs. But even large metro areas with high degrees of job decentralization like Chicago and Detroit concentrate many of their jobs in dense locations outside the urban core.
Common Sense: Using Common Finals to Measure Postsecondary Student Learning
Common Sense: Using Common Finals to Measure Postsecondary Student Learning
Source: Brookings Institution
College completion rates in the U.S. are stubbornly low despite the large and rising returns to a college degree. Efforts to increase student success in college have largely ignored a potentially key factor: the instruction that students receive in the sequence of courses that add up to a college education. Little evidence exists about how well students learn the material taught in these courses, largely because student performance is assessed using exams developed by instructors and thus cannot be compared to students at other institutions or even in other sections of the same course at the same college.
The lack of direct measures of student learning in higher education severely hampers efforts to measure the quality of instruction delivered in different classrooms. Improving the quality of instruction may represent a promising path to increasing the number of students who earn high-quality degrees by decreasing frustration and failure, and improving the skills of college graduates. But it is nearly impossible to improve instructional quality without being able to measure it.
This report describes a sophisticated set of common final exams implemented in two developmental algebra courses at Glendale Community College in California. These common finals enable instructors and administrators to compare student performance across different sections, and have earned broad faculty support by being implemented in a way that strikes a balance between standardization and the preservation of faculty autonomy.
Top Five Reasons Why Africa Should Be a Priority for the United States
Top Five Reasons Why Africa Should Be a Priority for the United States
Source: Brookings Institution
For over a decade now, the continent of Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, has undergone a major transformation. In 2000, The Economist referred to Africa as the “Hopeless Continent.” This nickname was based on an evaluation of the many disadvantages that characterized the continent: poverty and disease, cycles of conflict, military and dictatorial one-party states, etc. Despite large endowments of natural resources, the continent’s economic performance was dismal as a result of poor macroeconomic management and a hostile environment for doing business.
In 2011, The Economist referred to Africa as the “Rising Continent” and a March 2013 issue of the magazine contained a special report referring to Africa as the “Hopeful Continent.” These days, Africa is variously referred to in positive terms such as emerging, rising and hopeful. This positive view of Africa is justified—sub-Saharan Africa is the host of some of the fastest growing economies in the world. This growth is not just due to rising commodity prices but is also driven by a more vibrant private sector supported by an improved business climate. There have also been dramatic improvements in governance and economic management. The region has seen major improvements in various sectors of the economy, especially in services. The information technology revolution has become an important aspect of the new Africa, particularly in terms of mobile technologies. As a result of these developments, Africa’s middle class is now growing rapidly, and the continent has become a major market for consumer goods. While sub-Saharan Africa still faces many development challenges, it is a far cry from the one described by The Economist in 2000. Africa is indeed on the path to claiming the 21st century.
An Evidence-Based Approach to Improving Worker Training Programs
An Evidence-Based Approach to Improving Worker Training Programs
Source: Brookings Institution
The pace of job gains slowed last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In March, the economy added 88,000 jobs, down from the higher-than-expected gains of 148,000 and 268,000 jobs in January and February, and below the average monthly gain of 169,000 per month recorded over the prior 12 months. The unemployment rate was little changed at 7.6 percent and the fraction of the population with a job edged down. Since March 2012, the unemployment rate has declined from 8.2 percent to 7.6 percent, but much of this decline appears to reflect changes in labor force participation–the fraction of the population employed is unchanged over the year. Over the last twelve months, the private sector has added roughly 2 million jobs; in contrast, employment in state, local, and federal governments has declined by more than 75,000.
Reducing unemployment and building the foundation for a more robust job market are just two of the challenges facing policymakers at every level of government. But given today’s austere budget outlook, the resources available to address the nation’s most pressing problems—from recidivism to school readiness to obesity to workforce development—are shrinking. Indeed, continuing to make progress on these social issues necessitates producing more value with each dollar that the government spends. The solution is to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities for using data and evidence to identify the highest-payoff uses of taxpayer dollars.
One area where better use of evidence could significantly improve outcomes for many individuals is workforce training programs. Covering a wide range of fields—from information technology to healthcare to auto repair—these programs offer the prospect of boosting incomes, increasing employment, and improving the nation’s productivity. Too often, though, these benefits go unrealized, largely because prospective trainees have little access to the information and guidance necessary to make well-informed decisions. These lost opportunities are especially poignant in the current environment of elevated unemployment.
In this month’s employment analysis, The Hamilton Project explores how policymakers can better gather and disseminate evidence on worker training programs to help displaced and low-income workers determine which programs can help them find employment and increase their earnings most effectively. We also continue to explore the “jobs gap,” or the number of jobs that the U.S. economy needs to create in order to return to pre-recession employment levels.
Natural Gas Liquids: The “Other” Driver of the U.S. Oil and Gas Supply Resurgence
Natural Gas Liquids: The “Other” Driver of the U.S. Oil and Gas Supply Resurgence
Source: Brookings Institution
The fundamental changes in the U.S. hydrocarbon production landscape are now widely acknowledged. Analysts and pundits liberally discuss the prospects for U.S. “energy independence” and becoming “Saudi America.” What is less understood and discussed, however, is the role that rapid increases in the production of Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs) will play in the U.S. hydrocarbon revolution and the important impacts of NGLs for the industry.
According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), total domestic NGL production increased from just over 1.7 million barrels per day (mmbd) in 2005 to nearly 2.5 mmbd in October 2012. In the years to come, NGLs will be a critical component of the industrial sector’s ability to take advantage of the U.S. hydrocarbon resurgence, and will play a large role in the country’s ambitions for energy “self-sufficiency.” By 2025, EIA estimates that NGLs production will account for roughly one-quarter of U.S. liquids supply.
In this Natural Gas Briefing Document, the first in a new series of briefings by the Energy Security Initiative at Brookings (ESI) on developments in the natural gas market, the authors explain what NGLs are and why they are important, before exploring some important considerations for policymakers interested in capitalizing on this economic opportunity.
Washington Versus Washington (and Colorado): Why the States Should Lead on Marijuana Policy
Washington Versus Washington (and Colorado): Why the States Should Lead on Marijuana Policy
Source: Brookings Institution
When Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana by decisive margins in initiatives last November, they set up not just one but two conflicts. The first, of course, is about drug policy. No less important, albeit less widely noticed, is a conflict about power. To what extent can and should the states act independently of the federal government on an issue with national ramifications? The choices that Colorado and both Washingtons make over the coming months are likely to affect the course not only of drug policy but of state-federal relations for years to come.
Fifty Years of U.S. Family Planning: Lessons and Implications
Fifty Years of U.S. Family Planning: Lessons and Implications (PDF)
Source: Brookings Institution
U.S. family planning policy has grown increasingly controversial over the last decade. This paper assembles new evidence on family planning’s shorter and longer-term effects on child outcomes by leveraging two policy experiments during the 1960s and 1970s: (1) the state-level legal restrictions on the sales of contraception and effective repeal through Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 and (2) the early, community-based development of U.S. family planning programs. Building upon previous research that has focused on these policies’ fertility effects, I present new evidence that family planning policies induce significant improvements in child health at birth and the economic resources of children.
Do School Districts Matter?
Source: Brookings Institution
School districts occupy center stage in education reform in the U.S. They manage nearly all public funding and are frequently the locus of federal and state reform initiatives, e.g., instituting meaningful teacher evaluation systems. The most charismatic leaders over the last decade, people such as Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein, have received considerable national media attention. Financial compensation for district leaders is high, with many being paid more than the chief state school officers who oversee the entire systems in which they serve. Some private philanthropies pour money into initiatives to improve district performance. Others invest in ways that suggest that they too think districts are important but as impediments to rather than instruments of reform.
Despite the centrality of school districts in all the ways described, we know very little from existing research about how important they are to student achievement relative to other institutional components for delivering education services, including teachers and schools. Neither do we have information on the size of the differences in effectiveness among districts or whether there are districts that show exceptional patterns of performance across time, e.g., moving from low to high performing.
We begin to fill these information gaps in the present report by analyzing 10 years of data involving all public school students and school districts in Florida and North Carolina. We find that school districts account for only a small portion (1% to 2%) of the total variation in student achievement relative to the contribution of schools, teachers, demographic characteristics of students, and remaining individual differences among students. Within just the institutional components affecting student achievement, the effect of schools is about twice that of districts whereas the effect of teachers is about seven times larger than that of districts.
Even though district effects are only a small piece of the pie that represents all the influences on student achievement, there are still differences among the academic achievement of demographically similar students in higher and lower performing districts in North Carolina and Florida that are large enough to be of practical and policy significance. Combining the data from both states, 4th and 5th grade students in a district that is at the 70th percentile in district effectiveness are more than 9 weeks ahead of similar students in a district at the 30th percentile of effectiveness in their learning of reading and math. There are also districts that have displayed exceptional patterns of performance in terms of student achievement over the last decade, including districts that beat their demographic odds every year, districts that consistently underperformed, districts that had nose-dive declines, and districts that experienced transformative growth. These findings provide an empirical justification for efforts to improve student achievement through district-level reforms and should be a tantalizing fruit for those who want to better understand why some districts are better than others and translate that knowledge into action.
Citizenship, Values and Cultural Concerns: What Americans Want From Immigration Reform
Citizenship, Values and Cultural Concerns: What Americans Want From Immigration Reform
Source: Public Religion Research Institute and Brookings Institution
The following is a summary of the survey’s findings and highlights from the accompanying report:
- More than 6-in-10 (63%) Americans agree that the immigration system should deal with immigrants who are currently living in the U.S. illegally by allowing them a way to become citizens, provided they meet certain requirements. Less than 1-in-5 (14%) say they should be permitted to become permanent legal residents but not citizens, while approximately 1-in-5 (21%) agree that they should be identified and deported.
- More than 7-in-10 (71%) Democrats, nearly two-thirds (64%) of independents, and a majority (53%) of Republicans favor an earned path to citizenship
- Majorities of all religious groups, including Hispanic Catholics (74%), Hispanic Protestants (71%), black Protestants (70%), Jewish Americans (67%), Mormons (63%), white Catholics (62%), white mainline Protestants (61%), and white evangelical Protestants (56%), agree that the immigration system should allow immigrants currently living in the U.S. illegally to become citizens provided they meet certain requirements.
- Americans rank immigration reform sixth out of seven issues, far behind economic issues, as the highest political priority for the president and Congress.
- Nearly half (45%) of Americans say the Republican Party’s position on immigration has hurt the party in recent elections.
- Americans are more likely to say they trust the Democratic Party, rather than the Republican Party, to do a better job handling the issues of immigration (39% vs. 29%) and illegal immigration (43% vs. 30%). However, nearly 1-in-4 (23%) Americans say they do not trust either party to handle the issue of immigration.
- Views about immigrants’ impact on American society are strongly associated with political ideology. Conservatives (36%) and liberals (31%) are nearly equally as likely to say that immigrants are changing their own communities a lot. However, conservatives (53%) are significantly more likely than liberals (38%) to say that immigrants are changing American society a lot.
- Overall, Americans are more likely to have positive rather than negative views about immigrants. A majority (54%) of Americans believe that the growing number of newcomers from other countries helps strengthen American society, while a significant minority (40%) say that newcomers threaten traditional American customs and values.
2013 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well Are American Students Learning?
2013 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well Are American Students Learning?
Source: Brookings Institution
This is the twelfth edition of the Brown Center Report. The structure of the report remains the same from year to year. Part I examines the latest data from state, national, or international assessments. This year the focus is on the latest results from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) released in December, 2012. The U.S. did relatively well, posting gains in reading, math, and science. Finland made headlines by registering declines from the last time it took the TIMSS math tests. At both fourth and eighth grades, the scores of Finland and the U.S. are now statistically indistinguishable in math. Part I also looks at the so-called “A+ countries,” named that because they were the top nations on the first TIMSS, given in 1995. Part I offers “A Progress Report on the A+ Countries,” and finds that, surprisingly, three of the six have registered statistically significant declines since 1995. Despite that, most of the A+ countries still score among the world’s leaders. The exception is the Czech Republic, which scored at approximately the international average the last time it took TIMSS in 2007.
Part II explores a perennial theme in education studies—the topics that never seem to go away in terms of research and debate. This year it’s on the controversial topics of tracking and ability grouping. An analysis of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) documents a resurgence of ability grouping in fourth grade reading and mathematics. Tracking remains persistent in eighth-grade math, with about three-fourths of students in tracked classes. As readers are surely aware, both practices have been attacked for decades as inequitable, and many school analysts thought their use had diminished. Ability grouping was dominant for a long time in the elementary grades. Reading groups were the norm through most of the twentieth century and then declined dramatically in the 1990s. They are now coming back—and back strongly.
Part III is on a prominent policy or program. This year’s analysis is on the national push for eighth graders to take algebra and other high school math courses. Algebra is now the single most popular math course in eighth grade. The study in Part III uses state variation in enrollment rates to ask the question: what has happened to the NAEP scores of states that boosted their eighth-grade advanced-math enrollments? The study uncovers no relationship between change in state NAEP scores and change in enrollments. States boosting advanced math taking are no more likely to show NAEP gains than other states.
A second analysis uncovers some evidence consistent with the idea that advanced math courses are being “watered down,” that the mean achievement levels of advanced courses fall as enrollments go up. Again, change in NAEP score is the outcome of interest. The study shows that states that are more selective in math placements—not aggressively accelerating eighth graders into advanced courses—are more likely to show achievement gains in those courses.
2013 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well Are American Students Learning?
2013 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well Are American Students Learning?
Source: Brookings Institution
This is the twelfth edition of the Brown Center Report. The structure of the report remains the same from year to year. Part I examines the latest data from state, national, or international assessments. This year the focus is on the latest results from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) released in December, 2012. The U.S. did relatively well, posting gains in reading, math, and science. Finland made headlines by registering declines from the last time it took the TIMSS math tests. At both fourth and eighth grades, the scores of Finland and the U.S. are now statistically indistinguishable in math. Part I also looks at the so-called “A+ countries,” named that because they were the top nations on the first TIMSS, given in 1995. Part I offers “A Progress Report on the A+ Countries,” and finds that, surprisingly, three of the six have registered statistically significant declines since 1995. Despite that, most of the A+ countries still score among the world’s leaders. The exception is the Czech Republic, which scored at approximately the international average the last time it took TIMSS in 2007.
Part II explores a perennial theme in education studies—the topics that never seem to go away in terms of research and debate. This year it’s on the controversial topics of tracking and ability grouping. An analysis of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) documents a resurgence of ability grouping in fourth grade reading and mathematics. Tracking remains persistent in eighth-grade math, with about three-fourths of students in tracked classes. As readers are surely aware, both practices have been attacked for decades as inequitable, and many school analysts thought their use had diminished. Ability grouping was dominant for a long time in the elementary grades. Reading groups were the norm through most of the twentieth century and then declined dramatically in the 1990s. They are now coming back—and back strongly.
Part III is on a prominent policy or program. This year’s analysis is on the national push for eighth graders to take algebra and other high school math courses. Algebra is now the single most popular math course in eighth grade. The study in Part III uses state variation in enrollment rates to ask the question: what has happened to the NAEP scores of states that boosted their eighth-grade advanced-math enrollments? The study uncovers no relationship between change in state NAEP scores and change in enrollments. States boosting advanced math taking are no more likely to show NAEP gains than other states.
A second analysis uncovers some evidence consistent with the idea that advanced math courses are being “watered down,” that the mean achievement levels of advanced courses fall as enrollments go up. Again, change in NAEP score is the outcome of interest. The study shows that states that are more selective in math placements—not aggressively accelerating eighth graders into advanced courses—are more likely to show achievement gains in those courses.
Invention and the Mobile Economy
Invention and the Mobile Economy
Source: Brookings Institution
In this paper released in conjunction with a Mobile Economy Project panel discussion, Darrell West argues the importance of invention to mobile communications and demonstrates that the mobile industry is one of our most vibrant drivers of economic development.
Highlights include:
• Examples of key inventors: West seeks to understand how to sustain invention and draws lessons for encouraging the critical innovation needed for future development.
• How different countries handle invention: In comparing and contrasting other countries as well as the United States, West adds perspective and paints a global invention landscape.
• Ways to facilitate invention: A number of factors affect the quantity and quality of invention (including but not limited to research and development, the quality of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education, the nature of immigration, and the patent system. West emphasizes how we should maintain a culture of invention to encourage future prosperity.
