– School-based hiring is associated with a larger gap in the distribution of teacher quality between advantaged and disadvantaged schools.
– There is an association between school-based hiring and inequality of achievement based on socioeconomic status of students.
– School-based hiring may contribute to exacerbating inequality in learning opportunities and increasing family background’s positive effect on achievement.
– ESCS (a proxy of family SES) is positively associated with student performance in mathematics and science.
– School-based hiring is not associated with student performance on average, but school-based hiring is associated with the larger achievement gap between high- and low-SES students.
– More school autonomy in hiring was associated with a larger gap in the distribution of teacher quality across schools as well as larger socioeconomic achievement inequality.
– School-level mean SES has a positive and significant relationship with math and science achievement.
Current Selections
ClearSchool-based Teacher Hiring and Achievement Inequality: A Comparative Perspective
Socio-economic Status and Subject Choice at 14: Do They Interact to Affect University Access
– There are substantial socioeconomic differences in the subjects that young people study from age 14 to 16.
– Young people from advantaged households take more selective subjects, have higher odds of doing three or more facilitating subjects, higher odds of studying a full set of EBacc-eligible subjects (including English, Maths, History or Geography, two sciences and a modern or ancient language), but lower odds of taking Applied GCSEs (e.g. Applied Hospitality, Applied Health or Applied Manufacturing) than less advantaged young people.
– There were important differences by school characteristics, which may be a result of differential opportunities, subjects offered and within school policies.
– Even holding other factors constant, pupils in non-selective schools within selective local authorities study a less academically selective set of subjects.
– When considering university entry, and admission to high-status universities in particular, there are large raw differences associated with studying more academic combinations of subjects.
However, once differences in young people’s backgrounds and prior attainment associated with these differences in subjects studied are taken into account, these differences are, at most,
small.
– The results for studying the full set of EBacc subjects and for studying any applied subjects do show residual associations with university attendance.
– If young people from different socioeconomic backgrounds were studying a more similar curriculum between ages 14 and 16 it would be unlikely to make much of difference to the inequality in university entry highlighted by previous studies.
– Household income, home ownership and higher parental education increase the odds of taking three STEM subjects
– Socio-economic differentials in access to STEM are largely driven by prior attainment.
– Participation in STEM subjects does not vary by school characteristics, with the exception of the proportion of Free School Meals (FSM) in the school which is negatively associated with doing three or more STEM subjects.
School Climate and Dropping Out of School in the Era of Accountability
– Their findings indicate that attending a high school with better disciplinary order and stronger school attachment for the students is associated with a decreased likelihood of dropping out, above and beyond individual characteristics.
-They found that higher school SES translated to better school attachment, disciplinary order, and academic climate. Yet, disciplinary climate was the most positively influenced by school SES, with a one standard deviation (SD) increase in school SES being associated with about half a unit increase in disciplinary climate.
-The percentage of minority students was inversely related to school attachment, controlling for model variables.
-There is an indirect effect of school composition on dropping out. The larger the percentage of minority students the less attached they feel to their school so they are more likely to drop out.
– The researchers found that attending a high school with better school attachment greatly reduced the odds of a student being a dropout.
-Attending a school with more disciplinary order also directly de- creased the likelihood that a student was currently identified as a dropout.
-They also found that both prior math achievement and student SES were again strong predictors of whether a student had ever dropped out.
School Composition and Contextual Effects on Student Outcomes
Examine the relationships among school composition, several aspects of school and classroom context, and students’ literacy skills in science.
Trends of School Effects on Student Achievement: Evidence from NLS:72, HSB:82, and NELS:92
This study examines the impact of schools on student achievement (mathematics, reading, and science) over time using national probability samples of high school seniors. Our objective is to determine whether schools ‘‘make a difference.’’