– Curriculum track placement and the school’s poverty rate are significant predictors of several opportunity factors.
– Propensity factors, notably prior achievement, are the strongest determinants of science achievement.
– Other things being equal, having a state-certified teacher is the second strongest predictor of achievement within the model.
– Placement in a science honors course and being enrolled in a low income school are also linked to small but significant impacts on science achievement.
– A one standard deviation increase in the SES of a child’s family is associated with an increase in prior (fifth-grade) science achievement, an increase in motivation in fifth grade science class, an increase in approaches to learning in fifth grade, and a decrease in internalizing behaviors in fifth grade.
– SES also significantly affects opportunity variables. The strongest of these effects is the negative relationship between family SES and the percent of free/reduced lunch students in the school.
– SES is also associated with a slightly higher likelihood of placement within an honors eighth-grade science class and a small direct effect of increased science achievement in eighth grade when accounting for all other variables in the model.
– Female gender is associated with a decrement in prior (fifth-grade) science achievement, an advantage in fifth-grade science motivation, an advantage in fifth-grade approaches to learning, and a slightly higher score on internalizing problem behaviors.
2017 - Using an opportunity-propensity framework to estimate individual-, classroom-, and school-level predictors of middle school science achievement
Data were extracted from the ECLS-K, a nationally representative sample that began Kindergarten in the 1998-99 school year. This analysis includes 4447 sample students.
DV: 8th grade science achievement test score
IV: antecedent factors (gender, race, and family socioeconomic status from the student’s fifth-grade year), opportunity factors (Teacher’s experience, certification, and science education background), classroom variables (instructional track, total instruction time, the teacher’s rating of the science equipment available for use, and teacher’s rating of the classroom behavior), school SES (percentage of students who are eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch), propensity factors (Prior achievement, motivation, and internalizing behaviors).