Schools or Society
It is not clear why the academic skills of 13-year-olds at the bottom of the skills distribution have risen. It could be the result of improved schooling in Grades K–8, perhaps due to the standards-based reform efforts discussed above.
However, it could also stem from improvements in the out-of-school circumstances of American children most at risk of academic failure.
Between 1980 and 2000, the fraction of U.S. four-year-olds enrolled in classroom-based preschool programs rose from one-half to two-thirds. This trend could have resulted in more children acquiring the cognitive and socioemotional skills needed for success in school.
In addition, the birth rate among 15- to 17-year-old girls declined by 44 percent between 1990 and 2008, and by 60 percent among black teens. Because children born to teenage mothers are prone to develop problems that inhibit academic success, this trend could have contributed to both the increases in the mathematics skills of 13-year-olds and to an increase in the high school graduation rate. Moreover, the decline in the teenage birth rate could have reduced the number of girls who left school to care for children and thus resulted in higher graduation rates.
Yet another salutary trend is a 47 percent decline between 1994 and 2009 in the arrest rate of teenagers for violence-related offenses. One of several reasons this could have contributed to a rise in the high school graduation rate is that involvement with the criminal justice system typically results in a marked increase in absences from school.
Finally, it is possible that the introduction of more difficult GED examinations in 2002, which resulted in a temporary decline in the number of 16- to 18-year-olds obtaining the credential, contributed to the increase in the high school graduation rate during the decade ending in 2010. In 2002, after the GED Testing Service introduced a more difficult set of GED tests, the percentage of high school completers receiving the GED dropped from 17 to 10 percent. Since 2004, it has held steady at about 12 percent, again with about half of GEDs going to 16- to 20-year-olds.
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