Newton, Xiaoxia
Researchers: Xiaoxia Newton
University Affiliation: UC Berkeley
Email: xnewton@berkeley.edu
Research Question:
Explored various kinds of individual and school compositional factors that might produce differences in students' growth in math and eohs math.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Teacher College Record
Journal Entry: Vol. 112, No. 4, pp. 1064-1095
Year: 2010
Findings:
- A drop in mathematics achievement during the senior year of high school for all students in the sample despite an overall upward growth trend between grades 7 and 11.
- Study found an inequitable distribution of mathematics attainment at the end of high school due to the initial differences in mathematics achievement.
- Three strong predictors of mathematical attainment and growth: student’s continuous progress in math courses, the type of math course a student took at grade 7, and a school composition in terms of percent minority students.
- A student’s continuous progress in math courses from the 7th and 12 th grade had a substantially significant effect upon his or her math achievement at the end of high school.
- The type of math class a student took at the 7th grade also had a considerably positive effect upon his or her math achievement at the end of high school.
- Self-esteem, student behavior problems, student educational expectations and home resources were other significant predictors of a student’s math achievement at the end of high school, although small to moderate.
- A one-unit increase in the percent minority students would see 5.92 drop in math achievement at the end of high school, holding constant all student background variables and other school level variables.
- Student’s continuous progress in math courses from the 7th and the 12th grade had a significant effect upon his/her math growth rate.
- The type of math class a student took at the 7th grade also had a considerably positive effect upon his or her math learning rate (i.e., 0.98).
- Student educational expectations also had a positive but small effect upon math growth rate.
- Percent minority students in a school had a negative effect upon math learning rate. A one-unit increase in percent minority students holding constant all other predictors, decreased the expected math learning rate by 1.07 points.
- The effect of math attitude upon math scores was roughly the same for boys and girls.
- The effect of math attitude, which was an individual level effect, depended on the school level predictors (cross-level interaction). A one-unit increase in percent minority students in a school holding constant all other predictors, weakened the effect of math attitude upon student’s math scores by about 0.24 points.
- The positive effect of percent of class time devoted to teaching new math materials might be stronger in some school than in other schools.
- The positive effect of progress in math courses upon math attainment and growth rate, though the effect seemed stronger from the low group than that for the high group.
- The effect of tracking into higher level math upon attainment and growth rate was slightly stronger for the low group than that for the high group.