-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?
School Segregation, Charter Schools, and Access to Quality Education
If a student enrolls in a charter school rather than a non-charter school in the same district, what will the student encounter in terms of racial isolation, poverty level, and the school’s performance?
Science Achievement Gaps Begin Very Early, Persist, and Are Largely Explained by Modifiable Factors
- How large are general knowledge gaps occurring in kindergarten, and to what extent do these continue to occur by the end of first grade?
- As children move from third to eighth grade, what is their typical initial level (i.e., intercept) and rate of achievement growth (i.e., slope) in science?
- Are these gaps consistent with stable, cumulative (i.e., gap increasing), or compensatory (i.e., gap decreasing) achievement growth trajectories? How do these initial third-grade science achievement levels and third- to eighth-grade growth trajectories vary by children’s race, ethnicity, language, and family SES status? How are a more general set of child- and family-level characteristics, including parenting quality, related to typical levels of third-grade science achievement in the United States as well as to achievement growth from third to eighth grade?
- To what extent are the third-grade science achievement gaps, as well as third- to eighth-grade science achievement growth, explained by such modifiable factors as general knowledge, reading and mathematics achievement, and behavioral self-regulation? How much of children’s later science achievement can be predicted by their first-grade achievement-related knowledge, skills, and behaviors?
- With the aforementioned first-grade predictive factors accounted for, how important are the modifiable factors of children’s subsequent reading and mathematics achievement, and behavioral self-regulation at each of third, fifth, and eighth grades to their science achievement during these grades?
- To what extent does a school’s academic climate and racial, ethnic, and economic composition explain children’s science achievement, over and above the afore- mentioned child- and family-level factors?
Homeless Students and Academic Achievement: Evidence from a Large Urban Area
Is housing status a predictor of student achievement in a large urban district, even after controlling for common correlates like income and race? Is the homelessness effect mediated by attendance? What school-level factors predict homeless student achievement?
Exposure to Classroom Poverty and Test Score Achievement: Contextual Effects or Selection?
How does exposure to classroom poverty affect student test achievement?
The Cost-Effectiveness of Socioeconomic School Integration
1) What is the effect of SES integration on outcomes? 2) Is SES integration a cost effective strategy for diversity? 3) Is SES integration a cost effective strategy for school improvement?
Ethnic Matching, School Placement, and Mathematics Achievement of African American Students from Kindergarten Through Fifth Grade
1) Do African American students perform better on mathematics achievement test when taught by an African American teacher? 2) What is the effect of African American teachers on the mathematics outcomes of African American students by gender, school poverty, percentage of minorities in school, and type of community?
Housing Policy is School Policy: Economically Integrative Housing Promotes Academic Success in Montgomery Count, Maryland
Examination of elementary school math and reading performances of public housing students from very-low-poverty to moderate-poverty level neighborhoods to determine effects of economic integration on performance.
To Choose or not to Choose: High School Choice and Graduation in Chicago
This article examines differences in graduation
rates between participants and nonparticipants of Chicago’s many public high school choice programs.
The Ecology of Early Reading Development for Children in Poverty
Investigated reading development from kindergarten to third grade for economically disadvantaged children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort.
When Opting Out is not a Choice: Implications for NCLB's Transfer Option from Charlotte, North Carolina
Examines the implementation and early outcomes of No Child Left Behind’s voluntary transfer option for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School after end of court-mandated desegregation.
School Choice, Magnet Schools, and the Liberation Model: An Empirical Study
This study examined whether school choice that is implemented through magnet schools affects the segregation of low-income students in school systems.
Socioeconomic Integration as a Tool for Diversifying Schools: Promise and Practice in Two Large School Systems
Influence of socioeconomic integration on racial-ethnic diversity in San Francisco, CA and Wake County, NC schools.
The Relationship Between Degrees of Poverty and Student Achievement
Determine whether there were differences in the academic achievement for 4th and 8th grade students at three different levels of poverty.
Poor School Funding, Child Poverty and Mathematics Achievement
New and better design for research on the net achievement effects of poor school funding and child poverty in America.
Outcomes of School Desegregation: Findings from Longitudinal Research
Important noncognitive outcomes of school desegregation.