– 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.