Trends in the Payoff to Academic and Occupation-Specific Skills: the Short and Medium Run Returns to Academic and Vocational High School Courses for Non-College Bound Students

Using data from three longitudinal surveys of American high school students, I show that vocational courses helped non-college-bound-students to start their work life more successfully, in terms of steadier employment, higher wages and higher earnings. A comparison of the returns to academic and vocational course work for non-college bound students who graduated in 1972, 1980 and 1992 finds that the short and medium term payoffs to vocational courses rose substantially between 1972 and 1980 and remained high in 1992. Holding past and present school attendance and a host of other variables constant, academic course work in high school had much smaller labor market payoffs than vocational course work. These findings contradict the oft repeated claim that employers now seek workers with a good general education and are happy to teach the occupation specific skills necessary to do the job. Instead, they imply that the payoff to the occupation specific skills developed in schools has risen along with the payoff to generic academic skills. High school students who do not plan to attend college full-time would be well advised to start developing skills in a well paying occupation before they complete high school

The Impacts of School-Business Partnerships on the Early Labor-Market Success of Students

[Excerpt] This chapter examines the effects of improved signaling of student achievement in high school on the labor market success of recent high-school graduates. The chapter is organized into three sections. In the first section, we reproduce the argument that Bishop put forth in 1985 that better signaling of student achievement to employers would improve the quality of the jobs that recent high-school graduates could obtain and strengthen incentives to learn. In the second section, we analyze longitudinal data on eight graders in 1988 and attempt to measure the effect of school-employer partnerships on their subsequent success in the labor market, testing the hypotheses put forward in 1985. The final section of the chapter discusses the research and policy implications of the findings

Are Early Investments In Computer Skills Rewarded In The Labor Market?

The paper assesses the relationship between investments in computer skills by adolescents and earnings at age 26. The heaviest investors earned 9 to 16 percent more than otherwise equivalent NELS-88 classmates. The payoff to early computer skills was substantial in jobs involving intense and complex uses of computers; negligible when computers were not used at work. It was non-gaming use of computers outside of school that enhanced future earnings, not playing video/computer games—which lowered earnings. Children in low SES families invested less in computer skills and thus benefited less from the job opportunities generated by the digital revolution

Who Participated in School-to-Work Programs in 1998? Technical Report

[Excerpt] This report is based on a survey of 7425 students attending high school during the 1998/99 academic year that asked about recent participation in school-to-work (STW) activities. The survey is the first wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth begun in early 1997 (NLSY97). Ninety-three percent of the youth surveyed in the initial wave were interviewed in the second follow up that we are analyzing here. The statistics reported below are based on weighted data and so represent the population of 15 to 19 year olds attending school during the 1998/99 academic year. Youth who graduated from or dropped out of high school before fall 1998 were not asked questions about participation in school-to-work programs and so are not included in our analysis

The Impacts of Career-Technical Education on High School Completion and Labor Market Success

[Excerpt] High school career-technical education (CTE) is a massive enterprise. Last year high school students spent more than 1.5 billion hours in vocational courses of one kind or another. Of the twenty-six courses taken by the typical high school graduate, 4.2 are career-tech courses (NCES 2003a). Courses in general labor market preparation (principles of technology, industrial arts, typing, keyboarding, etc) and family and consumer sciences are offered in almost every lower and upper-secondary school. High school graduates in the year 2000 took 1.2 full-year introductory CTE courses during upper-secondary school and probably almost as many during middle school (NCES 2003a)

Educational Reform and Disadvantaged Students: Are They Better Off or Worse Off?

This paper analyzes the effects of increased academic standards on both average achievement levels and on equality of opportunity. The five policies evaluated are: (1) universal curriculum-Based External Exit Exam Systems, (2) voluntary curriculum-based external exit exam systems with partial coverage such as New York State Regents exams in 1992, (3) state minimum competency graduation tests, (4) state defined minimums for the total number of courses students must take and pass to get a high school diploma and (5) state defined minimums for the number of academic courses necessary to get a diploma. We use international data to evaluate the effects of CBEEES. High school graduation standards differ a lot across states in the U.S. This allowed us to measure policy effects on student achievement and labor market success after high school by comparing states in a multiple regression framework. Our analysis shows that only two of the policies examined deliver on increasing everyone’s achievement and also reduce achievement gaps: universal CBEEES and higher academic course graduation requirements. Other policies were less successful in raising achievement and enhancing equality of opportunity

The New York State Reform Strategy: Raising the Bar Above Minimum Competency

[Excerpt] Educational reformers and most of the American public believe that teachers ask too little of their pupils. African-American and Hispanic parents, in particular, criticize the low expectations and goals that teachers and school administrators often set for their children. These low expectations, they believe, result in watered down curricula and a tolerance of mediocre teaching and inappropriate student behavior. The result is that the prophecy of low achievement becomes self-fulfilling. The problem of low expectations is not limited to minority students or lower income communities. It’s endemic. High school subjects are taught at vastly different levels. Research has shown that learning gains are substantially larger when students take more demanding courses. Controlling for teacher qualifications and student ability and socio-economic status does not significantly reduce the positive effects of course rigor on test score gains (Kulik 1984, Monk 1994, Bishop 1996). Why then do students not flock to more demanding courses? First, these courses are considerably more work and grades tend to be lower. Secondly, the rigor of these courses is not well signaled to parents, neighbors, employers and colleges, so the rewards for the extra work are small for most students. Admissions staff of selective colleges learn how to read the transcripts of high schools they recruit from and they evaluate grades in the light of course demands. However, most colleges have, historically, not factored the rigor of high school courses into their admissions decisions. Employers hardly ever consider the rigor of high school courses when they make hiring decisions. Consequently, the bulk of students who do not aspire to attend a selective college quite rationally avoid rigorous courses and demanding teachers

Raising Academic Standards and Vocational Concentrators: Are They Better Off Or Worse Off?

This paper measures the impacts of tougher graduation requirements on course taking patterns, learning, college attendance and post high school labor market outcomes for vocational concentrators and non-concentrators. Our main goal was to assess whether vocational education students were specifically affected (positively or negatively) by the policies heavy emphasis on the academic part of the high school curriculum. Our results show how requiring higher number of academic credits to graduate and introducing a Minimum Competency Exams help high school graduates to be more successful in the labor market, but reduce their chances of obtaining a college degree. Vocational concentrators are better off in MCE states. The positive signal they sent to employers reinforces the occupational skills vocational concentrators possess

Is Standards-Based Reform Working? … and For Whom?

[Excerpt] Three presidents, the National Governors Association, numerous blue ribbon panels and national teachers unions have called for states to develop content standards for core subjects, examinations assessing student achievement aligned with the content standards and accountability mechanisms for insuring that students achieve these standards. In 1999 eighteen states had minimum competency exam (MCE) graduation requirements, 19 rewarded successful schools, 19 had special assistance programs for failing schools, 11 had the power to close down, take over or reconstitute failing schools

Secondary Education in the United States: What Can Others Learn from Our Mistakes?

Secondary schools are the least successful component of the U.S. education system. Students learn considerably less than in other industrialized nations and dropout rates are significantly higher. This paper provides an explanation for this failure, describes the standards based reforms strategies that many states are implementing to attack these problems, and evaluates the success of these efforts