The Heckman Equation Project is supported by the Irving Harris Foundation, The Children's Initiative: A Project of the J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation, the McCormick Foundation, and an anonymous funder.
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Commentary: The Hole in High School Equivalency
By James Warren
BusinessWeek
May 06, 2010
The GED was created as a second chance for students to get a degree and move up the economic ladder. New data show it fails to deliver. Heckman's work shows that GED recipients do about as well as regular high school grads on academic tests. To that extent, the program works. But his analysis also demonstrates that those "soft skills" are what American education misses amid the growing obsession to reward cognitive learning. GED recipients who fail do so not because of their inability to do math but because of non-cognitive abilities.
To close the achievement gap, start with early learning
By Roy E. Belson
Metro West Daily News
April 02, 2010
Too often our priorities are disproportionately focused on the upper grades where statistics abound for dropout rates and scores on "high stakes" testing. There is a heightened sense of urgency surrounding adolescents and their impending emergence into the adult world. Certainly these are legitimate concerns, but they can divert us from an education strategy that holds a powerful promise to boost student achievement and keep young people in school.
Economist James Heckman, a Nobel laureate, observes: "Because skills are accumulated starting early and over time, investing in young children is an investment in future productivity." A crisis mentality that rushes to fix problems after they occur prevents us from developing a systematic approach that can produce lasting value.
Escaping From Poverty
By Nicholas D. Kristof
New York Times Op Ed
March 24, 2010
For a quarter-century after World War II, the United States made great progress against poverty. Then in the 1970s, we fumbled. Over the last 35 years, our economy has almost tripled in size, but, according to the United States Census Bureau, the number of Americans living below the poverty line has been stuck at roughly 1 in 8.
Nobel Laureate Speaks At Case Early Childhood Education Forum
By Eric Wellman
March 18, 2010
"Earlier this year, the Obama administration promised to make a major investment in early childhood education to the tune of $10 billion...Driving this movement is the research of James Heckman, a nobel prizewinning economist at the University of Chicago."
Obama’s new push for preschool for at-risk children
By Amanda Paulson
The Christian Science Monitor
November 15, 2009
"This is the 'race to the top fund' for early education," says Cornelia Grumman, executive director of the First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group in Chicago, referring to the challenge grants that the Obama administration has been giving to spur K-12 education reform.
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