A new report created by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), an organization created by 30 countries including the U.S. that focuses on providing data for governments, indicates that the U.S. has fallen behind most other industrialized countries in social mobility.

The report, found here, highlights how societies that have low mobility are "more likely to waste or misallocate human skills and talents."  Or in other words, we are wasting talented individuals due to poor policy conditions.  The report outlines numerous points where Western European countries and the U.S. have failed their populations.

Highlights from the report:

• Education policies directly relate to intergenerational social mobility examples include:
  • Early childhood programs decreased the influence of parental background on achievement in secondary education and should be considered as a compulsory option for countries
  • Socio-economic mixing of schools had no affect on students from advantaged homes but boosted performance of disadvantaged students, urban planning policies that mix neighborhoods and schools could mitigate parental disadvantages on students
• In the U.S. the influence of a parent's socio-economic status on student achievement is very strong

• Educational inequalities lead to generational economic inequalities

• "Redristributive and income support policies seem to be associated with greater intergenerational social mobility." These policies "help defray the opportunity costs to parents in poor households of investing in education of their children"

• "Mobility depends more on how resources are spent for schooling than how much"
  
  • De-centralization to allow a match of resources to local needs are associated with decreasing the effects of parental socio-economic status on student achievement
• Teacher wage profiles that are steeper over their career and have incentives decreases the effect of parental status

Finally the report highlights the strong economic benefits of promoting intergenerational wage mobility.

This report of course does not talk about the human cost of letting people languish in poverty and a system that is not functioning for them.  It seems in this country easier to blame teachers, as pointed out by this interesting Bill Maher blog, than deal with the larger societal factors that lead to our problems in schools.