SUMI’s first funded projects will galvanize the education-to-economic-mobility field and begin closing critical knowledge gaps on how schools can drive students from poverty to prosperity. But some areas still need more research and development.
Our broad focus spans upward mobility drivers in the PK–12 context, including academic achievement, “noncognitive” factors, health and well-being, social capital, and career preparation. Our first year of investments presents opportunities to move the field forward in some categories more than others. For example, only two prior studies connect state standardized tests to adult economic outcomes, and SUMI will fund at least seven more. But we’re funding only one study on social capital and none on student health and well-being.
By reflecting on the remaining gaps, we can help move the field forward. Three areas needing more attention include creative and scalable “noncognitive” measures, studies of social capital and career preparedness, and measures and validation for how health and well-being skills and competencies affect upward mobility. We’ll dive into each of these areas below.
“Soft Skills” Measurement Innovation
“Soft skills” are always in demand, but the terms we use to describe these skills—such as “social-emotional skills” or “durable skills”—constantly evolve. These skills help students absorb, organize, and apply knowledge in different situations. Regardless of the label, these skills remain important during and after secondary school, acting as the connective tissue in education to economic mobility. Despite the importance, we lack creative and scalable ways to measure them in schools.
So far, no national or statewide standardized assessments exist for these “noncognitive” skills. In fact, many smaller-scale assessments vary even within a single district and may change year over year. This inconsistency is largely because of the high cost of development, time-consuming administration, and difficulty adapting measures across PK–12 contexts.
One of the largest-scale examples of “noncognitive” measurement in schools is in the eight California CORE districts, which, for nearly a decade, have used a standardized and validated tool to assess more than a million students annually. Although researchers have connected these measures to academic outcomes, they haven’t yet followed students beyond high school.
We believe that building low-cost, easy-to-use versions of existing validated “noncognitive” measures could accelerate progress. Research-practice partnerships could integrate the realities of the school day into the measure development process, making these tools more likely to scale in PK–12 settings. Researchers could also partner with organizations like Curriculum Associates or NWEA, which manage a large share of formative assessments and digital learning platforms. These platforms that already are a daily part of students’ lives could potentially be used to measure “noncognitive” skills through their metadata.
Finally, advances in artificial intelligence might offer groundbreaking opportunities to develop scalable measures for “noncognitive” skills that were previously unimaginable.
Other Skills for Career Success
If you talk to a neighbor or friend about what helped them succeed, you are likely to hear about two other SUMI areas of interest—social capital and career preparedness. Both are important in careers but are rarely measured in schools.
Researchers typically use long questionnaires to measure students’ social networks, where students mark off their friends and connections. It’s unrealistic to expect schools to collect data this way regularly, so we are interested in finding other ways to measure the strength and diversity of students’ networks and how they mobilize these relationships for future mobility—such as exploring careers, navigating college processes, and getting introduced to a future employer.
Beyond social networks, students need the nuts-and-bolts skills for life after high school, like writing résumés, job searching and applying, and interview techniques. Although schools might not currently track how they teach these skills, teachers, advocates, and parents from those closest to intergenerational poverty in DC say these are some of the most important skills for students’ success.
We are excited to learn from a series of studies recently funded by the federal Institute of Education Sciences through the Extending the Research of CTE Research Network. This work focuses on understanding career development opportunities and their effects on student outcomes. We hope these studies will produce opportunities to connect the data to longer-term economic mobility outcomes, too.
Health and Well-Being’s Contributions to Mobility
Several leading economic mobility frameworks we drew upon for SUMI, such as the Education-to-Workforce Indicator Framework and the Mobility Metrics Framework, highlight health-related factors like mental and emotional well-being and safety from trauma as important contributors to upward mobility. But studying these factors in the PK–12 education context raises important questions: What skills and competencies are tied to health and well-being? What individual and contextual factors are involved? How can schools influence these skills and be responsive to contextual factors?
These are formative questions we are eager to explore, with help from experts in public health, social work, education, and other fields. We also see a need for better data integration, such as linking student health records with education data and long-term success measures, all while maintaining student privacy.
In the coming year, SUMI will collaborate with researchers, practitioners, and funders to refine our questions, attract the right applicants, and learn about innovative practices already taking place in schools and districts. We invite you to join us on this journey by following our blog and future funding opportunities.