Measuring Education and Skill

In: The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Band 657, Heft 1, S. 136-148

Abstract

This article reviews recent developments in measuring education and skill that need to be taken into account in any new initiative to monitor social mobility. Over the past half-century, patterns of educational participation and attainment have become more heterogeneous, a trend that has been accompanied by increases in assessment and testing practices, and the availability of electronic data sources and other administrative records, including official school transcripts that are generally held indefinitely. This article describes the most promising approaches to measuring education and discusses some of the possible challenges for using the information to study social mobility. Measures of educational concepts fall along at least one of several dimensions: credentials earned, qualities of the schools attended, the amount and nature of curricular exposure, and the development and acquisition of skills. Selected data sources, with an emphasis on school transcripts and administrative records, and their possible uses are described.