Urban Institute Announces $3.5 Million in Research Grants Through Student Upward Mobility Initiative

Contact: [email protected], (202) 261-5709

WASHINGTON, DC, September 10, 2024 - The Urban Institute announced today the 16 recipients of $3.5 million in research grants, through the Student Upward Mobility Initiative, to investigate how education can more positively influence students' future economic mobility. The initiative, led by Urban, funds research grants to broaden and diversify the field of education-to-economic-mobility researchers.

The grantees will produce new research about the skills and competencies developed in the PK-12 system that drive economic mobility later in students' lives and how to measure them.

Researchers will explore whether high-quality educational data can identify the academic, social capital, and "noncognitive" factors-such as critical thinking and health and well-being-that lead to economic mobility and whether we can better identify technical skills that matter for a successful career. Additionally, researchers will develop new measures of noncognitive factors and career preparedness. All projects will test how results vary by student characteristics, such as race, gender, and disability status, and how they intersect with contextual factors, such as school funding and local labor market conditions.

"We're excited to work with these grantees to build a new understanding of what the most important skills are for the PK-12 system to provide students with the greatest chance of upward economic mobility," says Matthew Chingos, Urban's vice president for education data and policy and head of the initiative. "These studies will build upon leading economic mobility frameworks focused on individual-level and community-level well-being like the Education-to-Workforce Indicator Framework and Urban's Mobility Metrics Framework."

The 16 projects are as follows:

• Using Machine Learning to Uncover Which Skills Contribute to Students' Future Economic Mobility
  Jesse Bruhn, Brown University
• Understanding How Students' Skills and the Structural Barriers They Face Affect Their Economic Mobility
  Quentin Brummet and Paul Hanselman, NORC at the University of Chicago
• How Do Students' Social and Emotional Skills Relate to Upward Mobility?
  Yudan Chen, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
• Do ACT WorkKeys Scores Predict Early College and Career Outcomes?
  Sarah Fuller and Tom Swiderski, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Can Assessment Metadata Capture Executive Functioning Skills?
  Emily Hanno and Sophie Litschwartz, MDRC
• What Services and Supports Help Students with Disabilities Thrive?
  Jacob Hibel, Andrew Penner, Christopher Cleveland, and Andrew Saultz, University of California, Davis
• Is It Possible to Measure Youth Social Networks Using Administrative Data?
  Huriya Jabbar and Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, University of Southern California
• Leveraging Professional Skills to Increase Economic Mobility and Racial Equity
  Jason F. Jabbari, Shaun Dougherty, and Lauren Russell, Washington University in St. Louis
• Do Career and Technical Education Skills and Credentials Help Students in the Labor Market?
  Daniel Kreisman and Thomas Goldring, Georgia State University
• Evaluating the Relationship Between Social-Emotional Learning Competencies and Economic Mobility in Promise Neighborhoods
  Karen Matthews, Wesley L. James, Jonathan Bennett, and Rachel Arthur, Delta Health Alliance
• How Does Academic Success in High School Translate into Economic Mobility?
  John Papay, Brown University
• Which Skills Are Linked with Future Academic Success and Economic Mobility?
  Nolan Pope, George Zuo, and Cameron Conrad, University of Maryland, College Park
• Which Test Questions Most Predict Economic Mobility?
  Viviana Rodriguez and Jonathan Moreno-Medina, University of Texas at San Antonio
• Do Critical Thinking Skills Predict Student Upward Mobility?
  Beth Schueler and Jim Soland, University of Virginia
• Cocreating a Measure of Critical Career Readiness with Middle and High School Students
  Craig Schwalbe and Charles Lea, Columbia University
• How Do Literacy Skills in Early Elementary School Predict High School and College Success?
  Lindsay Weixler and Jon Valant, Tulane University

This diverse group of researchers includes sociologists, psychologists, economists, and education scholars. The research will include data representing students in urban, rural, and suburban school districts across the country. Twenty-five percent of grants will be for researchers at minority-serving institutions, and 50 percent of projects will be led or co-led by a scholar of color. A list of the scholars and descriptions of their funded research projects can be found here.

The Urban team leading the Student Upward Mobility Initiative will form an education-to-economic-mobility research cohort among the grantees that will collaborate to discuss research strategies, share preliminary findings, and receive peer learning opportunities. In addition to managing this cohort, Urban will continue to synthesize research insights, highlight effective practices in education, conduct research, and share findings with education policymakers, advocates, and practitioners to elevate how education can drive students' long-term economic success, power, autonomy, dignity, and belonging.

The Student Upward Mobility Initiative is a fiscally sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, with funding from the Walton Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Joyce Foundation. To learn more about the initiative, visit studentupwardmobility.urban.org.

About the Urban Institute

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit research organization that provides data and evidence to help advance upward mobility and equity. We are a trusted source for changemakers who seek to strengthen decisionmaking, create inclusive economic growth, and improve the well-being of families and communities. For more than 50 years, Urban has delivered facts that inspire solutions-and this remains our charge today.