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Closing the Education Gap
From: RAND
| By:
Georges VernezRichard A. KropC. Peter Rydell |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
Equality of opportunity in education for all ethnic groups in the United States is a goal that remains to be met. Over the years, little progress has been made in closing the gap in college attendance and completion between blacks and Hispanics, on the one hand, and non-Hispanic whites and Asians, on the other. Rapid changes in the ethnic composition of the nation's population, with Hispanic and Asian populations expected to increase dramatically in the next few decades, make this issue ever more pressing.
A RAND study by researchers Georges Vernez, Richard A. Krop and C. Peter Rydell demonstrates the necessity of putting national resources toward closing the education gap. This summary of the study highlights the researchers' methodology and conclusions, their new policy recommendations, and obstacles to attaining the goal. |
 ver increasing levels of immigration and the echo from the baby boomers are assuring that the size of the school- and college-age population will grow over the next two decades in excess of 15 percent. But immigration is not only contributing to the size of this population, it is also changing its ethnic composition, with most of the growth expected to take place among minority students, especially Hispanics and Asians. Projections are that, from 1990 to 2015, the share of Hispanics in the school- and college-age population will increase from 10 to 21 percent while that of Asians will increase from 3 to 6 percent. Projections for California are that more than half of this population will be Hispanic and another 14 percent will be Asian. The share of blacks is projected to remain constant while that of non-Hispanic whites will decrease significantly. |
These projected changes in the size and composition of the school population present a particular challenge to policymakers for several reasons. First, the nation's educational institutions must educate this increasingly larger and more diverse population at the same time as public support for education has softened. Second, Hispanics, the fastest growing minority, are significantly lagging other ethnic groups in educational attainment, most particularly in college-going and college completion. And third, long-term structural shifts in the U.S. economy are making education in general, and postsecondary education in particular, necessary for anyone who wants to compete in today's labor market and command a living wage. |
To improve policymakers' ability to make informed public education choices, this study explores the implications these trends have for the quality of the future labor force and for public social expenditures. It also examines the educational costs and social benefits of educational and immigration policy alternatives designed to close the gap in educational attainment between non-Hispanic whites and the lagging minorities, primarily Hispanics and blacks. |
We developed a systemic and dynamic model of the flows of the U.S. population through the U.S. primary, secondary, and postsecondary education systems to support our analyses. This RAND Education Simulation Model keeps track of the entire U.S. population. The in-flows to the population are births and immigration; the outflows are deaths and outmigration. The nation is divided into two regions: California and the rest of the nation. Migration flows between the two regions are recognized, as are the separate immigration flows into each region. In the model, the state region could be any state. We chose to model California because it has the largest immigrant and minority--mainly Hispanic--populations of all the states. The model simulates the detailed flows of students into and out of each high school grade and college level, starting with the 9th grade. Because the educational attainment and fertility rates of different groups in the population have historically varied, the model separately tracks 20 population groups differentiated by ethnicity, nativity (place of origin), and gender. For each year and each grade, the model projects the number of students in each group who remain in the grade for another year, the number who leave school, and the number who continue on to the next grade. It also projects the annual number of people who return to school at various levels after having been out of school. And, most important, the model projects the level of education achieved when people leave the educational system, student enrollment in terms of full-time equivalents (FTEs), and the costs of education. Then, using our estimates of the relationship between educational attainment and spending on public social programs, tax revenues, and income, the model projects the costs and benefits of changing the distribution of educational attainment. |
This study is a first exploratory effort to develop and assess alternative long-term strategies designed to minimize the education gap. We address three major questions:
- What might the future educational attainment of the population be if the current immigration and school- and college-going patterns continue?
- What benefits and what costs are associated with closing, partially and fully, the educational gap between non-Hispanic whites, on one hand, and blacks and Hispanics, on the other?
- How sensitive to immigration policy is the distribution of educational attainment within the population?
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In a subsequent effort, we hope to use the RAND Education Simulation Model and detailed information on existing programs and implemented strategies to assess their long-term cost-effectiveness for increasing the educational attainment of minorities. |
From our current study, we conclude the following. |
First, in spite of the rapid growth in the share of minorities in the nation's population, the educational attainment of the adult population age 25 or over will be higher in 2015 than it was in 1990. This finding reflects the dual dynamic process of (1) older, less-educated generations of people dying and being replaced in the labor force by better-educated new entrants (including minorities) and (2) the children, grandchildren, and so on of immigrants achieving increasingly higher levels of education. This pattern of higher educational attainment in 2015 than in 1990 cuts across all ethnic groups, including people of Mexican origin, other Hispanic origin, and Asian origin. |
Nevertheless, unless further gains are made in the educational attainment of minorities, the share of college educated among future new entrants--age 25 to 29--into the labor force will decrease. Also, the educational gap between blacks and Hispanics, on the one hand, and Asians and non-Hispanic whites, on the other hand, will increase. Our projections are that this increase will be most particularly evident in California, where blacks and Hispanics will constitute an overwhelming majority (75 percent) of the state's high school dropouts while Asians and non-Hispanic whites will constitute an overwhelming majority (89 percent) of the state's college graduates. |
Second, closing the educational gap for blacks and Hispanics would clearly pay for itself not only through the resulting long-term savings in income transfer and public social programs, but also through the resulting increased tax revenues and increased disposable income for the individuals involved. This is particularly the case in California, where nearly half of the student population today is Hispanic. Increasing educational attainment would, however, require sizable--up to one-third--increases in the capacity of (mainly) postsecondary educational institutions and, hence, significant dollar investments. One obstacle to getting this investment made is the fact that the spending of these dollars and the accrual of benefits from that spending do not overlap: the first is concentrated in the early years of a cohort, and the second takes place after education ends and is spread over an individual's lifetime. Our finding that the costs of closing the gap may be recouped within a decade or so--well within the lifetime of most of those called upon to make the investment--provides a strong argument that indeed the investment is in their self-interest as well. |
Another obstacle to be overcome is that the incentive states have to invest in education may be less than optimal, most particularly for postsecondary education. We found that states can significantly alter the distribution of the educational attainment of their labor force through both internal and international migration. Hence, a state that does not produce the number of college graduates it needs can import them from another state or from another nation and incur no immediate cost. The other side of the coin is that a state that invests in producing many college graduates may not capture the full benefit of its investment. The size of this phenomenon is not insignificant and is a strong argument for the federal government to play a leading role in promoting and funding efforts to close the educational attainment gap for blacks and Hispanics. |
In addition to requiring an increase in the capacity of the nation's education, increased educational attainment for blacks and Hispanics would require that programs designed to support and promote the educational persistence and achievement of these minorities be implemented on a much larger scale than is currently the case. We did not address this issue and the additional costs that such an expansion might require. We hope to do so in subsequent work. |
Finally, we found that the pattern of immigration that has prevailed since the mid-1960s is a major contributor to the gap in educational attainment for certain ethnic groups. Changes in immigration policy that reduce the number of immigrants or limit the permanent entry of low-educated immigrants (those with less than 12 years of education) would do as much to reduce the gap in the share of the nation's high school graduates between Hispanics and other ethnic groups as would an equalization of high school graduation rates between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites. However, changes in immigration policy would do nothing to close the education gap between blacks and non-Hispanic whites. |
Another thing that changes in immigration policy--even a major decrease in the number of immigrants allowed into the United States--would not affect is the future ethnic composition of the population. Regardless of whether immigration continues at recent levels, the immigration that has taken place over the last few decades and the higher fertility rates of Hispanics and some Asians compared to other population groups assure that the shift in the ethnic composition of the nation's population will continue. |
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