2008 - School Structural Characteristics, Student Effort, Peer Associations, and Parental Involvement: The Influence of School- and Individual-Level Factors on Academic Achievement

Attribution: Stewart, Endya B.
Researchers: Endya B. Stewart
University Affiliation: Florida State University
Email: ebstewart@fsu.ed
Research Question:
Examines the extent to which individual-level and school structural variables are predictors of academic achievement among a sample of 10th grade students abstracted from the National Educational Longitudinal Study database.
Published: 1
Journal Name or Institutional Affiliation: Education and Urban Society
Journal Entry: Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 179-204
Year: 2008
Findings:
  • Individual-Level Model:
  • Students who display higher levels of effort in their schooling, as measured by school attachment (.15) and school commitment (.19), have higher GPAs. Furthermore, associations with positive peers (.09) and parent-child discussion (.08) were significant predictors.
  • Family SES (.06) was also significantly and positively related to self-reported GPA.
  • Contrary to expectations, school involvement was not significantly related to GPA. Also, parental school involvement was not significantly related to GPA.
  • Individual-level characteristics accounted for about 47.6% of the within-school variance in GPA.
  • Between-School Model:
  • After controlling for individual-level variables, only one of the six school structural variables had a significant effect on GPA: school cohesion (.22).
  • Surprisingly, school poverty, proportion non-White, school location, school size, and school social problems were not significantly associated with average GPA when school cohesion and individual level predictors were taken into account.
Keywords: Academic AchievementRaceRacial CompositionSESSES CompositionStudent CharacteristicsRegions: NationalMethodologies: QuantitativeResearch Designs: Secondary Survey DataAnalysis Methods: Multilevel Models Sampling Frame:Students
Sampling Types: RandomAnalysis Units: SchoolStudentData Types: Quantitative-Longitudinal
Data Description:
  • Data were abstracted from the second wave (1990) of the NELS, a comprehensive national probability study of students, teachers, schools, and families designed and funded by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
  • Sample includes 11,999 students nested within 715 high schools.
  • African Americans were the largest minority group in the sample (12.0%), followed by Latinos (9.6%), Asians (7.2%), and Native Americans (1.2%). White students made up 70% of the sample.
  • DV: Academic achievement (measured by self-reported current grades in math, English, history, and science)
  • IV: School attachment, school commitment, school involvement, association with positive peers, parent-child discussions, family structure, gender, ethnicity, family SES, school size, school social problems, school cohesion, proportion non-White, school poverty (measured as proportion of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch)
Theoretical Framework:
Relevance:
Archives: K-12 Integration, Desegregation, and Segregation Abstracts