-The author review of the literature about the relationships among SES and educational outcomes revealed surprisingly few SES threshold studies relative to the enormous corpus of research on SES composition effects.
– With few exceptions, the very small number of U.S. studies that report thresholds effects typically were conducted by a school district’s internal staff using cross-sectional data (only one year) for a subpopulation of district’s students.
-Conclusions reached in these studies arguably apply only to the students in the district who took part in the study, in the year in which the data were collected.
-The studies described in this report are not an empirical foundation upon which general educational policy regarding SES thresholds can be reliably or validly based.
– Educational decision makers should focus on reducing concentrations of school-level poverty to as low a level as is feasible given the available demographic mix, and avoid policies based on the unsupported notion that there are poverty thresholds above and below which student achievement levels can be predicted.
– There is not yet a body of systematic, reliable, and valid evidence that school poverty thresholds exist, and that they influence student achievement outcomes.
Current Selections
ClearIs There Systemic Meaningful Evidence of School Poverty Thresholds?
Quantitative Analysis of an Urban Community College S-STEM Program
– There were higher rates in student success, progress, and cumulative GPA in the group of students who received the program as an intervention than a comparison group of students, matched on previously reported measures of success, who did not receive the intervention.
– The evidence presented supports the efficacy of the UC S-STEM program in increasing student progress rate for credits earned, cumulative GPA, and success.
– Progress rates for Cohort students were lower prior to program entry than after program entry, by an average of almost three credit hours per semester. This observed difference in rate means was statistically and represented a large effect size.
Empowering Teachers to Raise Career Awareness in Computing: Lessons Learned
This study aims to provide activities to motivate teachers to use technology in their classrooms and encourage students to pursue a STEM related field, Computer Science in particular.
Cracking the Code: Girls' and Women's Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)
The report is intended to stimulate debate and inform STEM policies and programmes at global, regional and national levels. Specifically, it aims to: i) document the status of girls’ and women’s participation, learning achievement, and progression in STEM education; ii) ‘crack the code’, i.e., decipher the factors that contribute to girls’ and women’s participation, achievement and progression in STEM education; and, iii) identify interventions that promote girls’ and women’s interest in and engagement with STEM studies.