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The aim of the OECD Career Readiness project is to identify patterns of teenage attitudes and activities that are associated with better transitions into employment by analysing multiple national longitudinal datasets. This paper looks for further evidence of the link between teenage activities, experiences and career-related thinking and adult career outcomes by analysing 10 new datasets from eight countries. Overall, the results of this paper find further evidence that secondary school students who explore, experience and think about their futures in work frequently encounter lower levels of unemployment, receive higher wages and are happier in their careers as adults. The findings of this paper are analysed together with the evidence from the two previous working papers of the Career Readiness project, concluding that there is international evidence to support 11 out of the 14 potential indicators that were explored as indicators of career readiness.

Numeracy and literacy skills have become increasingly important in modern labour markets. The large gender differences that several studies have identified have therefore sparked considerable attention among researchers and policy makers. Little is known about the moment in which such gaps emerge, how they evolve and if their evolution differs across countries. We use data from large-scale international assessments to follow representative samples of birth-cohorts over time, and analyse how gender gaps in numeracy and literacy evolve from age 10 to age 27. Our results suggest that, across the countries examined, males' advantage in numeracy is smallest at age 10 and largest at age 27. The growth in magnitude of the gender gap is particularly pronounced between the age of 15 and 27. Such evolution stands in sharp contrast with the evolution of the gender gap in literacy, which is small at age 10, large and in favour of females at age 15, and negligible by age 27.

The Monitoring the Future (MTF) project reports annually on levels and trends in self-reported substance use by secondary school students (e.g., Johnston, O'Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2009). The reports include subgroup comparisons, and these have revealed substantial differences among race/ethnicity groups, as well as some differences linked to parental education (as the available indicator of socioeconomic level). These comparisons are complicated by the substantial differences in racial/ethnic composition across levels of parental education. The present paper disentangles the confounding of race/ethnicity with parental education by examining the three largest race/ethnicity groups separately, showing and comparing how parental education is related to three common forms of substance use/abuse among adolescents. The authors show important interaction effects: The negative relationship between parental education and substance use is more pronounced among White adolescents than among those who are African American or Hispanic. They also unmask relationships between parental education and substance use that are clearer for White adolescents than for the total sample. Furthermore, the appendix to this occasional paper compares product-moment correlations and linear regression results for five-year intervals (1999-2003 vs. 2004-2008), and shows that very few regression coefficients differ significantly. This appendix is titled, "Use of Various Drugs by Grade among All Male Respondents, 1999-2008." (Contains 1 table and 10 figures.)

The most recent figures place the number of juvenile arrests in the United States at 2.11 million. (OJJDP, 2009). In some states, children as young as 10 years old are incarcerated for violent offenses. Crowded juvenile facilities are often unable to meet the needs of these large numbers of youth. The cost to treat offenders within long-term residential facilities is expensive. States spend anywhere from $4 million (in smaller states like Hawaii) to $450 million in larger states such as California on their annual juvenile corrections budget (freelibrary.com, 2010). Locked confinement in a state juvenile correction institution can run in excess of $60,000 annually (Tyler, Ziedenberg, and Lotke, 2006). As an alternative to incarceration for adjudicated youth, several forms of adventure therapy programming have been used. Most of these programs were developed around the premise that the structure of the adventure experience and associated facilitation could produce beneficial changes more effectively than time spent within a locked treatment facility. Just as the type of adventure therapy programs are mixed, so are the outcome research findings associated with juvenile delinquency. Several studies criticize adventure therapy with adjudicated youth for having insignificant or no lasting evidence of effectiveness, including Aos, Miller, and Drake (2006), Brown, Borduin, and Henggeler, (2001), Moote and Wodarski (1997), and Wilson and Lipsey (2000). As recognized in these studies, the key to unlocking the understanding of what is an effective adventure therapy program for juvenile delinquents is the inclusion of certain critical elements. Gass (1993), and more recently in Gillis and Gass (2010), identified seven key factors that seem to predominate the treatment elements of successful programs. These seven elements include treatment: (1) enhanced through action-oriented experiences, (2) centered on the use of unfamiliar client environments, (3) producing a climate of functional change through the positive use of stress, (4) highly informed with client assessment, (5) conducted in a small group, supportive atmosphere, (6) focused on solution oriented principles and techniques, and (7) that changed the role of therapist to remain more "mobile" to actively design and frame interventions.

This paper presents an exploratory analysis using NLSY97 data of the relationship between the likelihood of school continuation and the choices of whether to smoke or drink. We demonstrate that in the United States as of the late 1990s, smoking in 11th-grade was a uniquely powerful predictor of whether the student finished high school, and if so whether the student matriculated in a four-year college. For economists the likely explanation for this empirical link would be based on interpersonal differences in time preference, but that account is called in question by our second finding--that drinking does not predict school continuation. We speculate that the demand for tobacco by high school students is influenced by the signal conveyed by smoking (of being offtrack in school), one that is especially powerful for high-aptitude students. To further develop this view, we present estimates of the likelihood of smoking as a function of school commitment and other, more traditional variables. There are no direct implications from this analysis for whether smoking is in some sense a cause of school dropout. We offer some speculations on this matter in the conclusion. (Contains 9 tables, 3 figures, and 5 footnotes.)

This paper presents key indicators of educational and employment status for students making the transition from adolescence to early adulthood in selected Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The data that are presented include international comparisons of student achievement, educational attainment, literacy and unemployment among young adults. Data on expenditures for education are presented as a measure of national investment in education. It is a selective account, presenting data on important educational markers from international surveys and collections, offered as representative of key aspects of transitioning from education to the workforce in each country. To ensure comparability of data across countries, the data are derived from international surveys, or data collection efforts in which data have been harmonized. The time frame to which the data refer is the middle of the 1990s, between 1994-96. The countries chosen for comparison are OECD members that are representative of the regions of Europe (Northern, Central, Southern, and Eastern), English-speaking countries, and Asia. The coverage of countries varies by source, as the same countries did not participate in each of the surveys and data collections. However, every effort was made to include seven countries that are of particular interest, and they are the focus of the discussion in the text and appear in the figures when data are available: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Italy. An appendix presents: Description of School Systems in Seven Countries.

Concerns about declining political participation in the United States have once again raised the question of how young people get involved in politics. This project focuses on engaged youths and explores the personal trajectories, people and institutions that encouraged them to become engaged with their communities. The report also discusses how they define themselves, their activism, their concerns, their style of politics, and their political ideals. In-depth interviews were conducted with young people in Chicago, who were identified by directors of community organizations as the most engaged youths in their civic engagement projects. Most youth interviewed have a parent who respects them and listens to their ideas, and are involved in community and school organizations that provide opportunities for engagement. The young people have a keen sense of themselves as youths, even as other social identities such as race, nationality and gender play a role in their sense of self. Combating the negative stereotypes of youth, in particular the stereotypes of Latinos and African Americans, is central to their political activism, since they feel that such stereotypes can silence their political voices. Even though the youth are aware of the world around them, their politics are grounded in local issues, particularly education. They seek equal opportunities for themselves and their communities. They strive to be informed and their political style is one that respects others' points of view. They hope for a more inclusive, less corrupt government that uses its resources to help others, and a society that includes the voices of youth in meaningful ways. [A version of this paper will also appear in a special issue of "Children, Youth and Environmentalists, Pushing the Boundaries: Critical International Perspectives on Child and Youth Participation," Volume 17, Number 2. Edited by Roger Hart and Caitlin Cahill.]

This paper examines two aspects of teen childbearing in the United States. First, it reviews and synthesizes the evidence on the reasons why teen birth rates are so uniquely high in the United States and especially in some states. Second, it considers why and how it matters. We argue that economists' typical explanations are unable to account for any sizable share of the geographic variation. We describe some recent analysis indicating that the combination of being poor and living in a more unequal (and less mobile) location, like the United States, leads young women to choose early, non-marital childbearing at elevated rates, potentially because of their lower expectations of future economic success. Consistent with this view, the most rigorous studies on the topic find that teen childbearing has very little, if any, direct negative economic consequence. If it is explained by the low economic trajectory that some young women face, then it makes sense that having a child as a teen would not be an additional cause of poor economic outcomes. These findings lead us to conclude that the high rate of teen childbearing in the United States matters mostly because it is a marker of larger, underlying social problems.

We investigate possible explanations for the large decline in U.S. teen childbearing that occurred in the twenty years following the 1991 peak. Our review of previous evidence and the results of new analyses presented here leads to the following main set of observations. First, the observed decline in teen childbearing is even more surprising given the increasing share of Hispanic teens, who have higher birth rates. Second, we find that a reduction in sexual activity and an increase in contraceptive use contributed to the decline roughly equally. Third, we are able to identify a statistically discernible impact of declining welfare benefits and expanded access to family planning services through Medicaid, but combined they can only account for 12 percent of the observed decline in teen childbearing between 1991 and 2008. We are unable to find any impact of other policies (including abstinence only or mandatory sex education) or labor market conditions. In the end we conclude that the standard factors which are claimed to be related to the rate at which teens give birth appear to explain little of the recent trend.

Recent models of human capital formation represent a synthesis of the human capital approach and a life cycle view of human development that is grounded in neuroscience (Heckman 2007). This model of human development, the stability of the home and parental mental health can have notable impacts on skill development in children that may affect the stock of human capital in adults (Knudsen, Heckman et al. 2006; Heckman 2007). We study effects of maternal depression and substance abuse on children born to mothers in the initial cohort of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a national household survey of high school students aged 14-22 in 1979. We follow 1587 children aged 1-5 in 1987, observing them throughout childhood and into high school. We employ a variety of methods to identify the effect of maternal depression and substance abuse on child behavioral, cognitive, and educational related outcomes. We find no evidence that maternal symptoms of depression affect contemporaneous cognitive scores in children. However, maternal depression symptoms have a moderately large effect on child behavioral problems. These findings suggest that the social benefits of effective behavioral health interventions may be understated. Based on evidence linking early life outcomes to later well-being, efforts to prevent and/or treat mental and addictive disorders in mothers and other women of childbearing age have the potential to improve outcomes of their children not only early in life, but throughout the life cycle.

This paper presents and evaluates the broad results of pre-school intervention experiments and programs aimed at fostering the intellectual and social development of "disadvantaged" groups. Among the general findings discussed are (1) there is a "sensitive," or even "critical," period in child development, an age at which a child will be more susceptible to fostering; (2) a dominant share of intelligence develops during early childhood; (3) a gap in IQ between "advantaged" and "disadvantaged" groups exists before school entrance and widens thereafter; (4) "traditional" kindergartens do not protect disadvantaged children from lagging behind or failing in school; and (5) malnutrition or poor health have a marked effect on intellectual development. While studies have shown that IQ may be accelerated through pre-school programs, pre-school is not the "cure-all" it was anticipated to be. On the basis of the evidence available the author concludes that priority attention to pre-school intervention cannot be justified. Rather, priority should be given to educational support to the family unit. The most effective age group for such support is adolescents. An appendix extensively discusses conditions favorable for intervention during adolescence. (Author/RH)

Thirty teenage exchange students from Denmark and the United States were interviewed concerning the differences they perceived in the two cultures. Salient differences were cited in the domains of family rules, education and schools, use of alcohol, romantic relationships and sexuality, communication and friendships, ethnic differences and religious beliefs and practices. Sometimes these differences caused problems. For this reason placement of exchange students should be done with care. It is noted that parents in the United States tended to be more authoritative and less likely to give their children decision-making responsibility than were their Danish counterparts. The Danish teenagers enjoyed a great deal of freedom along with the concomitant responsibility. (BZ)

This paper argues for a radical restructuring of education for grades 11-14--by erasing the arbitrary dividing line between high school and college--to open opportunities for the learners the current systems leave behind. The authors make the case for an entirely new type of institution--neither high school nor college--designed specifically to better meet the needs of young people after 10th grade and help prepare them to succeed in the world of work. The authors take a hard look at the obstacles that impede more than half of the nation's young people from making successful transitions from high school to postsecondary education to the labor market despite the best of intentions of the many who support them. They identify the four key areas that need transformation: (1) incentives (in accountability and finance); (2) alignment; (3) governance; and (4) staffing. For each, the authors provide examples of innovation--existing policies, programs, and networks--that have made strides toward smoothing transitions. Last, the authors recommend an action agenda of next steps to start pushing closer to the ideal. [For the executive summary, see ED614770.]

In the United States, we tend to assume that young people should become educated and then go to work, as though the two were entirely separate stages of life. This dichotomy blinds us to the fact that work itself can be a powerful means of education. Indeed, the workplace is where many young people become most engaged in learning high-level skills and content, insofar as work gives them opportunities to apply academic subject matter to real-world problems. The workplace is an excellent place for young people to develop the range of academic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal capacities that are referred to, collectively, as "deeper learning." This paper argues that the current discussion about deeper learning in the nation's high schools ought to be reframed, in order to acknowledge that career readiness isn't just an outcome of the K-12 curriculum but a process--often overlapping with academic studies--through which young people learn deeply and prepare for working life. In order to mature, young people need to participate in activities that take them out of their comfort zones, challenge them, place them among adult workers in authentic settings, and ask them to perform. To scale up existing opportunities for work-based deeper learning, federal and state policies should incentivize: (1) Employers to take young people into workplaces for meaningful learning experiences; (2) Educators to implement work-based experiences as a means of learning deeply; and (3) Intermediary organizations to translate between educators and employers and provide the infrastructure that makes collaboration possible. These approaches will require careful attention to principles of educational quality, with an emphasis on deeper learning. [This report was produced as a collaborative effort with Students at the Center, a Jobs for the Future initiative. For the full report, see ED561286; for the policy bulletin, see ED561285]

In the United States, we tend to assume that young people should become educated and then go to work, as though the two were entirely separate stages of life. This dichotomy blinds us to the fact that work itself can be a powerful means of education-giving students opportunities to apply academic subject matter to real-world problems, and pushing adolescents to grow up and gain other deeper learning skills such as following difficult assignments through to completion, working in teams, solving unscripted problems, and communicating effectively with colleagues of differing ages and backgrounds. In the paper "Let's Get Real: Deeper Learning and the Power of the Workplace," author Nancy Hoffman argues that the current discussion about deeper learning in the nation's high schools ought to acknowledge that career readiness isn't just an outcome of the K-12 curriculum but a process- often overlapping with academic studies-through which young people learn deeply and prepare for working life. Hoffman makes the case that current federal, state, and local policies could be updated to incentivize and enable work-based learning opportunities and alignment between expectations for success in education and success in the workplace. Greatly diminished youth employment opportunities in today's labor market make work-based learning opportunities connected to educational pathways more critical than ever. Hoffman contends that there are models of high-quality work-related education in many states, some promoted through national initiatives and networks, others impressive "one off" schools and programs, as well as vocational or career and technical education, or CTE, schools and centers. The problem is that such excellent programs and schools currently serve only a relatively small number of students. And the question is: can these excellent models be further scaled up and their approaches refined and adapted in our many comprehensive high schools? Can the U.S. develop a system that promotes career education? Hoffman argues that there are several policy opportunities that could make this goal a reality. [This policy bulletin is based on a report published by Students at the Center, an initiative of Jobs for the Future. For the full report, see ED561286; for the executive summary, see ED561289.]

For young people in the United States, whatever their backgrounds, one of the essential purposes of schooling should be to help them develop the knowledge, skills, and competence needed to search for and obtain work that they find at least reasonably satisfying. Our present educational system does precious little to introduce young people to the working world or to prepare them for just how large a role work is likely to play in the rest of their lives. While the phrase "college and career readiness" appears seemingly everywhere in the current discourse about the goals of high school, the "career readiness" part often seems like an afterthought, tacked on as if to suggest that if students pursue an academic, college-prep course of study--the real priority of most recent school reforms--they will also, as a side benefit, have better job prospects. This lack of attention to career preparation only serves to intensify the class divide, leaving the most privileged students to anticipate and prepare for professional careers like those of their parents, while students from low-income families continue to think of work mainly as a way to survive. This paper argues that the current discussion about deeper learning in the nation's high schools ought to be reframed in order to acknowledge that career readiness isn't just an outcome of deeper learning; rather, career readiness is better defined as a process through which young people learn deeply and become prepared for the American version of working life. Hoffman begins by reviewing where the United States now stands with regard to youth experience in the labor market. She turns to a more hopeful subject when she discusses the psychological benefits of learning through a combination of school- and work-based activities. She continues with a description of an existing education system that relies on partnerships between employers, unions, a central government, and educators to make work a source of deeper learning that meets both the developmental needs of young people and the economic need for a steady supply of well-trained talent. She then reviews some promising initiatives that aim to promote high-quality, work-based learning for a wide range of U.S. students. [This report was produced as a collaborative effort with Students at the Center, a Jobs for the Future initiative. For the executive summary, see ED561289; for the policy bulletin, see ED561285.]