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March 21, 2024 —The Urban Institute announced today the launch of an $11 million multiyear initiative to investigate how education can more positively influence the future economic mobility of students.

“The Student Upward Mobility Initiative will invest in research that identifies measures of students’ skills and competencies in prekindergarten (PK) through 12th grade that drive economic mobility for them later in life,” said Matthew Chingos, vice president for education data and policy at Urban and colead of the initiative. “This work will augment the traditional measures we use to track student success, such as test scores, attendance, and graduation rates.”

Although research has shown education is a key factor in students’ lifelong success, there is little evidence about how the PK–12 system can improve students’ later economic mobility and how their broader context affects those outcomes. “Knowing which PK–12 skills and competencies drive economic mobility for different groups of students is information that can be used to target student-, school-, and system-level practices and interventions and support accountability,” Chingos said. “It’s also important to recognize that upward mobility is experienced by individuals but is influenced by forces beyond the individual level—like access to opportunity. An essential part of our work will be understanding how those forces affect PK–12 skills and competencies that ultimately spur mobility, so we can recommend policy and practice change.”

In 2024, the Student Upward Mobility Initiative will award an initial $3 million in funding for researchers to develop new or improved measures of PK–12 skills and competencies that have a likely link to economic mobility and to investigate the relationship between existing measures and economic mobility, while considering contextual factors such as school and labor market segregation and students’ experiences from early childhood to post high school. archers from across the country who receive funding will examine skills and competencies related to everything from academic achievement, “noncognitive” factors such as critical thinking, and health and well-being to social capital and career preparation, all of which schools can help develop.

“Through this initiative, our team will build a new field of education-to-economic-mobility researchers, synthesize research insights, and share findings with education policymakers, advocates, and practitioners to help elevate how schools can drive students’ long-term economic success, power, autonomy, dignity, and belonging,” said Urban’s Karishma Furtado, a senior research associate and colead of the project, who noted that the Urban team has consulted with teachers and parents of students experiencing intergenerational poverty and a cross-disciplinary advisory council of experts, all of whom have helped shape the initiative.

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. More information can be found at 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.