Current Grants
Beginning in September 2024, 16 research teams from across the country will explore how PK–12 education can drive future economic mobility among students. Below, explore funded projects by research topic.
ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
How Does Academic Success in High School Translate into Economic Mobility?
John Papay
Brown University
This project team will examine how students’ grades, test scores, and other markers of academic success in high school are related to postsecondary attainment and earnings. Drawing on statewide data from Massachusetts, the study will also identify schools that are especially effective at improving these K–12 outcomes among disadvantaged students and examine whether they also increase economic mobility.
Using Machine Learning to Uncover Which Skills Contribute to Students’ Future Economic Mobility
Jesse Bruhn
Brown University
This project team will use machine learning techniques to group-test questions in ways that capture specific underlying skills. Using math and reading tests from public schools in Texas, the researchers will link skill measures to outcomes later in life, including wages and whether a student attended college. This study could uncover skills important for economic mobility that are not currently articulated within standardized tests.
Understanding How Students’ Skills and the Structural Barriers They Face Affect Their Economic Mobility
Quentin Brummet and Paul Hanselman
NORC at the University of Chicago
This project team will examine how students’ skills interact with structural barriers to affect their economic mobility. The researchers will look at Oregon students’ test scores in math, English language arts, and science; exposure to school discipline; and attendance. The team will then work with the US Census Bureau to correlate these factors with postsecondary and labor market outcomes (e.g., employment and earnings), criminal legal system involvement, health insurance coverage, disability status, and program participation.
How Do Literacy Skills in Early Elementary School Predict High School and College Success?
Lindsay Weixler and Jon Valant
Tulane University
This project team will measure associations between literacy skills in grades K–3 and student outcomes through high school graduation and postsecondary enrollment. Using statewide data from Louisiana, the study will compare the predictive power of DIBELS scores with those of 3rd-grade state reading tests and examine how results vary by students’ prekindergarten experience, socioeconomic status, and location (urban versus rural).
What Skills Help Students with Disabilities Thrive?
Jacob Hibel, Andrew Penner, Christopher Cleveland, and Andrew Saultz
University of California, Davis
The project team seeks to understand how the services and supports provided to students with disabilities during their K–12 education relate to their academic and life outcomes in early adulthood. The researchers will examine how students with disabilities’ test scores and exposure to school discipline are related to long-term outcomes, including postsecondary attainment, income, criminal legal contact, fertility, and mortality. Drawing on linked data from the State of Oregon and the US Census Bureau, the study will also consider how outcomes vary by what services a student receives and how long they received them.
Which Skills Are Linked with Future Academic Success and Economic Mobility?
Nolan Pope, George Zuo, and Cameron Conrad
University of Maryland, College Park
This project team seeks to fill gaps in the existing research by exploring which skills most strongly predict future academic success and economic mobility. The team will quantify whether specific competencies in math, reading, science, and social studies predict postsecondary attainment and economic outcomes, including earnings and industry. Using statewide data from Maryland, the study will measure skills using subscores on state exams in each of these subjects.
Which Test Questions Most Predict Economic Mobility?
Viviana Rodriguez and Jonathan Moreno-Medina
University of Texas at San Antonio
This project team will use test data from across Texas to identify which test questions and student answers are most predictive of long-term outcomes, such as high school graduation, college enrollment, and earnings. The researchers’ goal is to construct new test-based measures that predict mobility more strongly. The study will examine how achievement gaps on these new measures compare with those based on traditional test scores and which features of test questions are most predictive of long-term outcomes.
CAREER PREPAREDNESS
Cocreating a Measure of Critical Career Readiness with Middle and High School Students
Craig Schwalbe and Charles Lea
Columbia University
This project team will work with a community advisory board of young people and partners from two schools to create a new measure of critical career readiness tailored to economically marginalized adolescents. The measure will assess how students’ awareness of employment discrimination, stigma, and access to employment-related resources can empower them to explore their career interests and plan their educational career trajectories.
Do Career and Technical Education Skills and Credentials Help Students in the Labor Market?
Daniel Kreisman and Thomas Goldring
Georgia State University
This project team will examine how skills and credentials obtained through career and technical education are rewarded in the labor market. To do so, the researchers will link NOCTI technical assessment scores from four Atlanta-area school districts to postsecondary and earnings data. The team will also analyze whether there is an additional earnings increase for obtaining industry-recognized credentials and how outcomes may vary across career and technical education pathways and student and school characteristics.
Do ACT WorkKeys Scores Predict Early College and Career Outcomes?
Sarah Fuller and Tom Swiderski
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The project team will study if the ACT WorkKeys career preparation assessment (which measures skills in graphic literacy, applied math, and workplace document comprehension) is correlated with postsecondary enrollment, employment, and earnings. The study will follow students who attended career and technical education programs in North Carolina for up to six years following their high school graduation. The researchers will also examine how WorkKeys scores and economic outcomes vary by race and ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, career and technical education concentration, postsecondary attendance, and local economic conditions.
Leveraging Professional Skills to Increase Economic Mobility and Racial Equity
Jason F. Jabbari, Shaun Dougherty, and Lauren Russell
Washington University in St. Louis
This project team will study how professional skills, competencies, and on-the-job performance in career-connected learning settings can increase economic mobility. The researchers will work with 14 private high schools from the Cristo Rey Network; the schools employ a novel Corporate Work Study program that provides all students a tangible work-based learning experience one day per week at a local corporation. These experiences are accompanied by a school-based curriculum that focuses on professional skills and competencies. The team will examine long-term outcomes, including college enrollment and persistence, employment, earnings, and credit report data.
“NONCOGNITIVE” FACTORS
Evaluating the Relationship Between Social-Emotional Learning Competencies and Economic Mobility in Promise Neighborhoods
Karen Matthews, Wesley L. James, Jonathan Bennett, and Rachel Arthur
Delta Health Alliance
This project team will measure the relationship between social-emotional learning competencies in seventh through ninth grades and long-term outcomes (e.g., postsecondary enrollment and wages) among students facing multiple sources of disadvantage in rural Mississippi. The study will draw on data from the LifeSkills survey-based assessment of social-emotional learning competencies collected in Promise Neighborhoods.
Can Assessment Metadata Capture Executive Functioning Skills?
Emily Hanno and Sophie Litschwartz
MDRC
This project team aims to develop reliable measures of early childhood executive functioning skills by analyzing metadata collected from two novel digital assessments of early academic skills. Building on the Measures for Early Success Initiative, the study will examine whether question response time or other metadata fields reflect executive function. The researchers will also evaluate the validity of these metadata measures across different individual, school, and community contexts to ensure they are equitable and effective.
How Do Students’ Social and Emotional Skills Relate to Upward Mobility?
Yudan Chen
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
This project team will use nationally representative data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study to analyze how social and emotional skills (e.g., self-discipline, self-efficacy, and social skills) at ages 9 and 15 relate to a child’s education level, occupation, and earnings at age 22. The study will examine how these skills interact with individual, school, and district-level factors.
Do Critical Thinking Skills Predict Student Upward Mobility?
Beth Schueler and James Soland
University of Virginia
This project team will develop a way to measure critical thinking skills. To do so, they will analyze student performance on state English language arts test questions that capture critical thinking skills. Using statewide data, the researchers will then examine whether these critical thinking skills can predict students’ postsecondary attendance, persistence, graduation from institutions shown to increase economic mobility, and likelihood of voting.
SOCIAL CAPITAL
Is It Possible to Measure Youth Social Networks Using Administrative Data?
Huriya Jabbar and Sarah Winchell Lenhoff
University of Southern California
This project team will test whether it is possible to create a scalable measure of youth social capital using educational administrative data. The researchers will field student-level surveys focusing on cross-class and cross-race ties in four diverse high schools in metropolitan Detroit. They will then compare these results with administrative records on course enrollments and demographic characteristics.
