| Summary: | The chapters are all connected through a common theme of non-cognitive skills -- skills that are not fully captured by achievement tests and are currently under-recognized in most educational systems.
The first chapter is an evaluation of OneGoal, program designed to improve college outcomes for disadvantaged high school students by improving non-cognitive skills. Based on a variety of quasi-experimental methods, the estimates show that the program improves college enrollment by around 10--15 percentage points, and about one quarter of the effects can be explained by improvements in non-cognitive skills.
The second chapter presents results of an evaluation of the General Educational Development (GED) program. The GED is an achievement test that high school dropouts can take to certify that they are equivalent to high school graduates. It reviews the existing evidence on the returns to GED certificates and presents new evidence. After controlling for achievement test scores before high school, GED recipients fare no better than other high school dropouts but lag behind high school graduates, because GED recipients lack non-cognitive skills that are missed by achievement tests.
The third chapter presents additional evidence on what achievement tests miss. It summarizes recent evidence and presents new evidence on the extent to which achievement tests predict meaningful life outcomes. It presents a measurement framework that recognizes that all measures of skill are behavior that could depend on multiple skills and incentives. It reviews causal evidence on the effect of skills on outcomes.
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