Test scores, noncognitive skills and economic growth

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.IZA Discussion Paper No. 9559 December 2015 ABSTRACT Test Scores, Noncognitive Skills and Economic Growth *Many studies have found a strong association between economic outcomes of nations and their performance on international cognitive tests. This association is often interpreted as evidence for the importance of cognitive skills for economic growth. However, noncognitive skills, such as motivation and perseverance, are also important for the performance on cognitive tests. This study decomposes the performance on an international test (PISA) into two components that differ with respect to their underlying skills: the starting level and the decline in performance during the test. The first component can be interpreted as a measure of cognitive skills, whereas the second component captures noncognitive skills. We find that countries differ in the starting level and in the decline in performance, and that these differences are stable over time. Both components have a positive and statistically significant association with economic growth, and the estimated effects are quite similar. This suggests that noncognitive skills are important for explaining the relationship between test scores and economic growth.JEL Classification: J24

Immigration and the school system

“…For example, Borghans and Schils (2015) have shown that PISA scores can be used to measure non-cognitive abilities of students, such as "agreeableness, and motivational attitudes toward learning" and those studies are predictive of the success of those students later in life. Balart et al (2015) in fact show that those same abilities, picked up indirectly through PISA test scores, are predictive of national GDP growth. More generally, Heckman and his co-authors (see, e.g., Cunha et al 2010) have extensively shown that non-cognitive abilities, hitherto thought difficult to measure, 35 are as important or more as traditional cognitive abilities in determining the human capital of a population.…”

Measuring Success in Education: The Role of Effort on the Test Itself

“…Test performance is highly correlated with both individual income and economic growth, but explains little of the variation in income across individuals in the U.S., and particularly under-predicts U.S. economic growth in cross-country comparisons (Murnane et al, 2000;Hanushek and Woessmann, 2011). Differences in test-taking effort across students and across cultures may add explanatory power to these analyses and better inform our understanding of the relationship between ability and long-term outcomes (e.g., Borghans and Schils, 2013;Balart et al, 2015;Segal, 2012).…”

Measuring Success in Education: The Role of Effort on the Test Itself

“…The finding that scores on low-stakes tests do not always reflect students' true ability has already been recognized in the literature (Wise and DeMars 2005 and Finn 2015 provide reviews). One strand of research uses observational data to examine correlations between performance and proxies for motivation and effort, including self-reported motivation, interest, attitudes and effort, fast response times, low item response rates, and declining performance over the course of the test (e.g., Eklöf 2010; DeMars and Wise 2010; Borghans and Schils 2013; Zamarro, Hitt, and Mendez 2016;Borgonovi and Biecek 2016;Balart, Oosterveen, and Webbink 2017;Akyol, Krishna, and Wang 2018). 3 Yet, important for our purposes, these studies are not able to identify the impact of effort separately from the impact of ability.…”