Generation Left Behind?

The current generation of young adults may be the first since World War II, possibly the first in American history, to be less educated than the generation that preceded them, according to a new report from the American Councils on Education. The report, Minorities in Higher Education 2008, is the 23rd annual report looking at trends in college enrollment and completion by race and ethnicity.

This dropoff in educational attainment, which economists have described as a skills slowdown, is due in large part to widening educational attainment gaps between white and Asian young adults and their black and Latino peers. While white and Asian adults ages 25-29 are more likely to have a college degree than whites and Asians over age 30, black and Latino adults ages 25-39 are less likely to have college degrees than those over age 30. Add in stagnation in attainment among many subgroups of white young adults, and demographic changes, and you get an overall trend towards skill stagnation and possibly even decline.

This trend towards skills slowdown has serious consequences for our economy and way of life–potentially even greater than the current financial crisis. Throughout the post-World War II era, American lifestyles have reflected the assumption that each generation would live better than the one that preceded it, in large part due to the fact that each generation had higher skills than the one that preceded it. Stagnating or even declining levels of educational attainment bring those assumptions–and our economic competitiveness–into question.

How do we address this crisis? While much the attention naturally focuses on college-going and completion, where the problem is most apparent, any solution must include a focus on improving the quality of early education for children from birth through early elementary school. That’s particularly true for two reasons: First, research shows that failure to learn to read and do math proficiently by the end of third grade is a very strong predictor for later school failure and high school dropout. If kids don’t learn to read well by third grade, it’s much harder for them to catch up later. Therefore, any strategy to increase the number of young people finishing high school and going on to succeed in college must begin by making sure they build strong foundational skills in reading and math by third grade. Second, the data from the ACE report clearly shows that the problem here is closely connected to racial and ethnic achievement gaps. And other research shows that as much as half of the racial gap between white and black students at the end of high school already exists by the time children get to first grade. (Economic gaps between poor and more affluent children at the start of first grade are equally large.) Thus, narrowing, or at least slowing the growth of, postsecondary attainment gaps for poor and minority students must be part of the solution–and doing that requires an increased focus on poor and minority students in the early years, when they first start to fall behind their white and affluent peers.

Investing in early education now may seem like a costly expenditure at a time of economic crisis, but if we don’t do it, the long-term costs of continued skill stagnation and growing racial, ethnic, and economic attainment gaps will be much greater.