Pathways to Opportunity: What Works Lab
The Progressive Policy Institute’s What Works Lab (WWL) library curates both research and information on best practices regarding education and career pathways. The WWL library aims to provide policymakers, practitioners, employers, and other stakeholders with empirically rigorous studies and investigations, in order to provide better solutions to education issues.
The curated material is sorted into four categories:
- Research encompasses empirical research from academic journals and nonprofit research organizations.
- Case Studies encompass largely qualitative analyses of individual stories of programs and individuals.
- Insights encompasses survey data of relevant stakeholders in education policy, including industry leaders, educators, and students.
- Frameworks encompass works that put forward a theoretical way of thinking about a topic or policy.
Additionally, all Research comes with a Level of Evidence rating based on the type of research method used: “4” for experimental, “3” for quasi-experimental, “2” for correlational, and “1” for observational. These categories are inspired by the U.S. Department of Education’s ESSA tiers of evidence, which provides schools with a four-tiered framework for program evaluation studies. However, we are adopting a more simplified framework for evaluating a wider range of studies, based solely on their methodology. This Level of Evidence rating should not be used to compare the quality or rigor of these studies as a whole, as it is intended to be only representative of a study’s methodology.
What Works Lab is led by Senior Advisor Bruno Manno.
Topics currently included:
- Apprenticeships
- Career Pathway Programs and Navigation
- Career and Technical Education
- Credentials
- K-12
- Mentorship
- Post-Secondary Education
- Skills
- Social Capital
The What Works Lab selects information from a variety of sources and also collaborates with other PPI initiatives, including the New Skills for a New Economy Project, the Reinventing America’s School Project, and the American Identity Project.
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We hope to include more topics over time, and encourage users to recommend papers for submission to the database, which can be done through this form.
Note that it is acceptable to suggest a paper with an education-related topic that is not specifically listed above, as the WWL will be periodically updated with new topics and papers.
Trusting Talent: Cross-Country Differences in Hiring
Career Pathway Programs and Navigation
Research
This article argues that a society’s level of social trust influences employers’ hiring strategies. Employers can focus either on applicants’ potential and select on foundational skills (e.g., social skills, math skills) or on their readiness and select on more-advanced skills (e.g., pricing a derivative). The higher (lower) the social trust—people’s trust in their fellow members of society—the more (less) employers are willing to invest in employees and grant them role flexibility. Employers in higher-trust societies are therefore more attentive to applicants’ potential, focusing more on foundational skills than on advanced skills. We empirically test this theory by using a novel dataset of more than 50 million job postings from the 28 European Union countries. We find that the higher a country’s social trust, the more its employers require foundational skills instead of advanced skills. Our identification strategy takes advantage of multinational firms in our sample and uses measures of bilateral (country-to-country) trust to predict job requirements, while including an instrumental variable and fixed effects on country, year, employer, and occupation. These findings suggest a novel pathway by which social trust shapes employment practices and organizational strategies.
Talent Disrupted: College Graduates, Underemployment, and the Way Forward
2-Year and 4-Year Degree Programs
Research
Most students, families, policymakers, and
educators look to higher education in large part as a
bridge to economic opportunity and upward mobility.
Today, however, some are calling into question
whether higher education is delivering on that
promise. While a college education is still worth it for
the typical graduate, it is not a guarantee: college
students face an increasing degree of risk. One of
the biggest risks students face is that their degree
will not provide access to a college-level job. Today,
only about half of bachelor’s degree graduates
secure employment in a college-level job within a
year of graduation.
Using a combination of online career histories of
tens of millions of graduates, as well as census
microdata for millions of graduates, we developed
a comprehensive picture of how college graduates
fare in the job market over their first decade of postcollege employment. We measured the prevalence
and severity of underemployment and the cost in
lost earnings, as well as analyzed how these are
associated with a range of factors, including degree
field, student characteristics (e.g., race/ethnicity and
gender), institutional characteristics (e.g., selectivity,
concentration of low-income students, and type),
and internship participation.
Challenging Social Inequality Through Career Guidance
Career Pathway Programs and Navigation
Research
This report explores how school-level career guidance systems can more effectively respond to social inequalities. It draws on new analysis of PISA and PIAAC data and builds on the OECD Career Readiness Indicators to review the impact of inequalities related primarily to socio-economic background, gender and migrant status/ethnicity on the character of education-to-work transitions. The data analysis identifies additional barriers facing certain demographic groups in converting human capital into successful employment. It also finds that teenage access to career development is strongly patterned by the demographic characteristics of students. Consequently, the report highlights a range of career guidance interventions that can be expected to mitigate the negative impact of inequalities on student outcomes, enabling fairer access to economic opportunities. The report concludes by reviewing how the innovative new Career Education Framework in New Brunswick (Canada) systematically addresses inequalities within K-12 provision.
Education at a Glance 2024
K-12
Research
Education at a Glance is the definitive guide to the state of education around the world. More than 100 charts and tables in the publication and country notes – as well as many more in the data explorer – describe the output of educational institutions; the impact of learning across countries; access, participation and progression in education; the financial resources invested in education; and teachers, the learning environment and the organisation of schools. The 2024 edition focuses on equity in education, providing indicators on gaps in educational outcomes and discussing the effect of educational attainment on labour market outcomes.
Student Agency for 2030
K-12
Framework
The first part of the work involved the development of the Learning Compass, a framework that creates common language for broad education goals, and defines the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that learners need to fulfil their potential and contribute to the well-being of their communities and the planet.Student agency is one of the Learning Compass’ core concepts. Read more about the role of agency in helping learners navigate toward fulfilling their potential in the OECD agency concept brief. (https://www.gradpartnership.org/resources/student-agency-for-2030/)
Indicators of teenage career readiness:
Career Pathway Programs and Navigation
Review
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.
Thinking about the future: Career readiness insights from national longitudinal surveys and from practice
Career Pathway Programs and Navigation
Research
This paper explores how teenage thinking about jobs and careers relates to adulthood labour market outcomes. The OECD working paper Career Ready? How schools can better prepare young people for working life in the era of COVID-19 identifies career certainty, alignment and ambition as relevant indicators related to career thinking. This paper extends analysis of these indicators to new longitudinal datasets from Australia, Denmark, and Switzerland, and incorporates two new indicators, instrumental motivation and career concentration. The findings provide further evidence that teenage career ambition, certainty, alignment, instrumental motivation and broad occupational expectations relate to positive employment outcomes, including in periods of economic turbulence. However, this is not always the case and on some occasions, this association is found only in specific subgroups. Finally, the paper presents evidence from the academic literature, analysis of OECD PISA data and accounts from practitioners, which focus on ways in which schools can foster students’ career thinking.
Career ready?: How schools can better prepare young people for working life in the era of COVID-19
Career Pathway Programs and Navigation
Review
The focus of this working paper is on how secondary schools can optimise young people’s preparation for adult employment at a time of extreme labour market turbulence. By reviewing academic analysis of national longitudinal datasets, it is possible to identify indicators of comparative adult success. How teenagers (i) think about their futures in work and what they do to (ii) explore and (iii) experience workplaces within and outside of schools is consistently associated with better than expected employment outcomes in adulthood. Data-driven career guidance will take such indicators into account within delivery. Analysis of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 illustrates substantial variation in the extent of such career readiness between and within countries. Variation in career readiness is particularly associated with disadvantage. More effective education systems will ensure schools systematically address inequalities in teenage access to information and support in preparing for working life.