A working paper released by the Hutchins Center this month argues that increased federal investment in educational research and development could narrow income-based achievement gaps, especially if those dollars are used to expand data-driven innovation and decentralize some of the policymaking process. In particular, the author identifies three policy areas the feds should target: school accountability, teacher performance, and undergraduate financial aid.
School accountability measures have had some success in narrowing the achievement gap, but they are not enough, argues the paper’s author, Sarah Turner. There is still an ample amount of inequality of opportunity owing to differences in family resources and circumstances. Families in the top income quartile are able to spend over six times as much on educational enrichment as those in the bottom quartile, giving them a clear advantage. Yet, according to Turner, the government can change this if it invests in high-quality assessments that states can tailor to local contexts to ensure the only schools available to the public are of sufficient caliber.
On the issue of teacher performance, value-added data clearly show that high-quality educators improve student achievement. Therefore, having more of them in low-income schools would also narrow achievement gaps. To help accomplish this, Turner asserts that federal policy should focus on funding a data-driven research strategy that invests in training and recruiting better teachers, promotes professional development, and provides adequate compensation based on evaluation of performance. Federal efforts could also help create and sustain resources like state-level databases that track classroom outcomes of graduates of different teacher education programs.
Finally, the cost of higher education also disproportionately disadvantages low-income students, hampering future earning and thereby stunting upward mobility. Students in the bottom income quartile who attend college are significantly less likely to graduate compared to those in the top quartile (in part because of cost, but also because disadvantaged students are much less likely to be college ready). Federal efforts such as making financial aid more transparent and portable could increase accessibility and impact enrollment and attainment. Pell Grants in particular should be restructured so as to more accurately assess the needs of both first-time college students and adults returning to school, thereby making it more efficient and inclusive. And efforts can also be made on the local level to assist in matching students with appropriate colleges by increasing student access to college planning tools and developing more efficient ways for high school counselors to convey options to students to increase the likelihood of degree completion.
The overarching premise of the paper is that the federal government needs to significantly increase funding and resources available to education research and development. Education policy should be mainly dealt with at the state and local levels to accommodate for the idiosyncrasies of individual areas. However, to accelerate the narrowing of income-based achievement gaps, it is important that the federal government has a hand in ensuring that education funding gets used properly and effectively.
SOURCE: Sarah Turner, “Education Markets: Forward-Looking Policy Options,” Hutchins Center (January 2017).
