WASHINGTON – Alarming numbers of America’s largest demographic group – millennials – are disconnected from education and employment, and the causes must be identified and addressed to save trillions of dollars in untapped potential and related social outlays, according to presenters and guests brought together Wednesday afternoon by the Educational Testing Service to discuss its two new reports on the subject.
“We have a lot of work to do,” said ETS president and CEO Dr. Walt MacDonald, an assessment shared by nearly 50 educational leaders, policy experts, researchers and others at a research forum titled “Broken Connections: Millennials and the Transition to Adulthood” held at the National Press Club.
At the forum, ETS unveiled its most recent study on the topic, “Doesn’t Get Better with Age: Predicting Millennials’ Disconnection.” The report, written by ETS senior research scientist Dr. Catherine M. Millett and ETS researcher Dr. Marisol Kevelson, drew on longitudinal data collected from a cohort of study subjects who were high school sophomores in 2002.
Defining disconnected as not in school, not working and not in military service, the researchers found that rates of disconnection among youth and young adults increased as study subjects aged. The percentage of the sample defined as disconnected progressed from 0 percent at age 16 to 1 percent at age 18, 5 percent at age 20 and 12 percent at age 26.
Among other key findings:
· Disconnection is influenced and to an extent can be predicted by “a complex interplay” of background factors, chief among them socioeconomic status, child-rearing and high school academic abilities and experiences.
· Disconnected individuals at ages 18, 20 and 26 tended to be from homes of lower socioeconomic status, score lower on standardized reading and math tests in the 10th grade, have re-documented special education needs, be tardy to and absent from school more and be suspended more.
