Does grading affect educational attainment? A longitudinal study

The purpose of the study was to investigate how grading in primary school affected students’ achievement measured by grades in 7th, 8th and 9th Grade and educational attainment in upper secondary school (12th Grade), and how the effect varied as a function of students’ cognitive ability, gender and socio-economic status. The data derived from the Evaluation Through Follow-Up (ETF) longitudinal project containing information on students who received grades in Grade 6 and students who did not. The subjects were 8558 students born in 1967. A quasi-experimental design was applied where multiple growth and logistic models were fitted to data. The result showed a main significant negative effect of grading on subsequent achievement (Grade 7–9) and there were important differential effects: graded low-ability students received lower subsequent grades through Grades 7–9 and had lower odds to finish upper secondary education, compared to ungraded low-ability students. The gender difference seems to increase over time: graded girls achieve higher grades throughout Grades 7–9 and had higher odds to finish upper secondary education, compared to ungraded girls and graded and ungraded boys.     

Language factor: Does it affect children's performance on word problems?

48 children from primary 4 in private and public schools (24 from each) were asked to solve 10 arithmetic word problems (involving more or less as the cue word) presented in English and in their native language. Retrospective clinical interviews were also conducted to find out how each child analyzed the meaning of each problem, before deciding which operation to use to solve it. The results revealed that both public and private school children performed better both in skills and in strategies when problems were presented in their native language than when presented in English, but only public school had the result to be significant (P<.025). Also data obtained from the interviews are in accord with psycholinguistic theories concerning the polarized comparative pair of less and more.     

Does parental homework involvement mediate the relationship between family background and educational outcomes?

This research examines whether parental homework involvement mediates the relationship between family background and educational outcomes such as academic achievement and academic self-concept. Data from two studies in which grade 8 students (N = 1274 and N = 1911) described their parents’ involvement in the homework process were reanalyzed via structural equation modeling. Perceived parental homework interference and perceived homework-related conflict were negatively related to students’ academic development, whereas perceived parental support and perceived parental competence to help with homework were positively related to academic outcomes. Although there were small associations between some aspects of parental homework involvement and family background variables, parental homework involvement did not mediate the relationship between family background and educational outcomes. Findings highlight the need for differentiated conceptualizations of parental homework involvement as well as detailed analyses of the processes underlying the association between family background and educational outcomes.     

Does educational development matter?

This essay provides reflections on the growth and influence of educational development, and the changes in approaches to teaching in universities. It also identifies some areas in which educational development and developers face challenges for the future, including educational technology, leadership and resistance to change.     

Does continued participation in STEM enrichment and enhancement activities affect school maths attainment?

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills are very valuable for economic growth. However, the number of young people pursuing STEM learning trajectories in the United Kingdom was lower than the predicted demand during the last decade. Several STEM enrichment and enhancement activities were thus funded by the government, private, and charitable organisations to improve understanding of and raise pupil interest in these subjects. One possible way of measuring the impact of these activities in supporting pupil understanding of maths was to track the proportion of young people obtaining a ‘good’ grade in standardised national tests such as the GCSEs. Attainment is of course only one possible outcome of education but certainly a very important one because students are more likely to continue studying subjects in which they score higher. This makes maths attainment even more important as it is a pre-requisite for admission to STEM degree courses. This longitudinal study makes use of the National Pupil Database to assess the impact of these schemes on maths attainment of participating schools. Following up 300 intervention schools for five years the study shows the intervention group did not do any better than the comparator. The paper suggests further directions for research and offers recommendations for practice.     

Txt msg n school literacy: does texting and knowledge of text abbreviations adversely affect children's literacy attainment?

This paper reports on two studies which investigated the relationship between children's texting behaviour, their knowledge of text abbreviations and their school attainment in written language skills. In Study One, 11–12‐year‐old children provided information on their texting behaviour. They were also asked to translate a standard English sentence into a text message and vice versa. The children's standardised verbal and non‐verbal reasoning scores were also obtained. Children who used their mobiles to send three or more text messages a day had significantly lower scores than children who sent none. However, the children who, when asked to write a text message, showed greater use of text abbreviations (‘textisms’) tended to have better performance on a measure of verbal reasoning ability, which is highly associated with Key Stage 2 (KS2) and 3 English scores. In Study Two, children's performance on writing measures was examined more specifically. Ten to eleven‐year‐old children were asked to complete another English to text message translation exercise. Spelling proficiency was also assessed, and KS2 Writing scores were obtained. Positive correlations between spelling ability and performance on the translation exercise were found, and group‐based comparisons based on the children's writing scores also showed that good writing attainment was associated with greater use of textisms, although the direction of this association is nor clear. Overall, these findings suggest that children's knowledge of textisms is not associated with poor written language outcomes for children in this age range.     

Jack-of-all-subjects? The association between individual grade variance and educational attainment

This paper uses detailed register information on students in lower secondary school in Norway to study the importance of the second moment of individual grade distribution: grade variance. Students receive discrete-value grades from 1 to 6 in the same 13 subjects, and the grade point average (GPA) is used to determine entrance into upper secondary school. This leads to a limited number of possible GPA values and the within-GPA-value variation in grades is used to investigate the association between grade variance and educational attainment. Grade variance is found to be negatively associated with educational attainment across the grade distribution and for both genders. US data confirm this finding. Results suggests that being a generalist with similar skills across subjects predicts educational attainment and that educational institutions may benefit from considering more than just grade point average when making admission decisions.     

Does educational privatisation promote social justice?

Social justice in education refers to the expectation that the education system provides fairness in its access to opportunities and results. Proponents of educational privatisation believe this would not only open up opportunities for those that otherwise are restricted from attending good schools, but that it would also improve overall efficiency in the education system through pressures of market competition. This article first provides a framework for analysing a quasi-market in education and for considering the potential effects of privatisation. It then applies this framework to the Netherlands, a school system premised completely on choice where two thirds of the schools are privately sponsored. We conclude that the Dutch system, thanks to a series of policies and regulations in place, performs relatively well on social justice, when looking at freedom of choice and overall productive efficiency. However, for equity and social cohesion, despite clear policy efforts, the privatised system seems to undermine social justice for certain groups in the population. The dilemma observed here is that some private benefits of education must be compromised to achieve greater equity and social cohesion. It is an open question whether policy makers are willing to make such tradeoffs.     

Does the availability of parental health insurance affect the college enrollment decision of young Americans?

The present study examines whether the college enrollment decision of young individuals (student full-time, student part-time, and non-student) depends on health insurance coverage via a parent's family health plan. Our findings indicate that the availability of parental health insurance can have significant effects on the probability that a young individual enrolls as a full-time student. A young individual who has access to health insurance via a parent can be up to 22% more likely to enroll as a full-time student than an individual without parental health insurance. After controlling for unobserved heterogeneity this probability drops to 5.5% but is still highly significant. We also find that the marginal effect of the availability of parental health insurance has a larger effect on older students between ages 21 and 23. We provide a brief discussion about possible implications of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 in this context.     

Something in the air? Air quality and children's educational outcomes

Poor air quality has been shown to harm the health and development of children. Research on these relationships has focused almost exclusively on the effects of human-made pollutants, and has not fully distinguished between contemporaneous and long-run effects. This paper contributes on both of these fronts. Merging data on ambient levels of human-made pollutants and plant pollen with detailed panel data of children beginning kindergarten in 2010, I study the relationship between poor air quality on achievement in early grades. I also provide tentative estimates of the effects of air quality in the first years of life on school-readiness. I find that students score between 1 to 2 percent lower on math and reading scores on days with high levels of pollen or fine airborne particulate matter, and that asthmatic students score about 10 percent lower on days with high levels of ozone. I find suggestive evidence that poor air quality during early childhood negatively affects school readiness.     

Does sibling gender affect personality traits?

This paper studies whether sibling gender affects personality traits. We use the idea that if parents decide to have a second child, it is random whether they will have a boy or a girl. Therefore, the relationship between the second-born sibling's gender and the first sibling's personality traits is causal. We employ longitudinal data from a large British cohort which is followed from birth onwards. The dataset includes personality traits at age 10 and 16. Our main result is that oldest boys in a household are more agreeable if their next-born sibling is a girl. This effect is robust across age (10 and 16), when controlling for among others family size, and when applying corrections for multiple hypothesis tests. Agreeableness is an important trait in life as it has been shown to correlate positively among others with being employed, having a skilled job, savings, and life satisfaction.     

Does motivation affect performance via persistence?

Our cognitive–motivational process model (Vollmeyer, R. & Rheinberg, F. (1998). Motivationale Einflüsse auf Erwerb und Anwendung von Wissen in einem computersimulierten System. [Motivational influences on the acquisition and application of knowledge in a simulated system.] Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie, 12, 11–23.) assumes that motivational factors affect performance via mediators. Such a potential mediator is persistence. Fifty-one students learnt a complex dynamic system. We measured their initial motivation (mastery confidence, incompetence fear, interest and challenge), then a set of mediating variables during learning. Performance measures were knowledge acquisition and knowledge application. A path-analysis showed that initial motivation influenced persistence. However, any possible relationship between persistence and performance was disrupted because learners with more knowledge stopped sooner (i.e., were classified as lowly persistent). Thus highly persistent learners did not have higher mean final performance, despite acquiring more knowledge over trials.     

Does early reading failure decrease children's reading motivation?

The authors used a pretest-posttest control group design with random assignment to evaluate whether early reading failure decreases children's motivation to practice reading. First, they investigated whether 60 first-grade children would report substantially different levels of interest in reading as a function of their relative success or failure in learning to read. Second, they evaluated whether increasing the word reading ability of 15 at-risk children would lead to gains in their motivation to read. Multivariate analyses of variance suggest marked differences in both motivation and reading practice between skilled and unskilled readers. However, bolstering at-risk children's word reading ability did not yield evidence of a causal relationship between early reading failure and decreased motivation to engage in reading activities. Instead, hierarchical regression analyses indicate a covarying relationship among early reading failure, poor motivation, and avoidance of reading.     

Unequal origin,unequal treatment,and unequal educational attainment: Does being first generation still a disadvantage in India?

The Indian higher education system is supposed to be the source of equal opportunities to all students irrespective of their life circumstances. Does it succeed in realizing this ideal? In fact, the system of higher education inadvertently plays a critical role in constructing and recreating the inequalities between groups. The prime victims of inequality are first-generation students, whose disadvantages are unseen, their voices ignored and left on their own. In India, first-generation students are typically confronted with the dynamics of caste-based inequality in addition to their deficiency in the cultural and social capital. In this context, the purpose of this study was to examine if being a first-generation student had a significant influence on educational attainment. The field survey data of 900 senior secondary students was employed for the analysis. For the purpose of analysis, educational attainment was measured in terms of completion of higher secondary school and entry into higher education. The findings of the study confirm the difference in educational attainment between first-generation students and their counterparts. Results of logistic regression indicate that the location, category, family income, academic achievement, stream of education, and social and cultural capital are the pertinent factors which influence the educational attainment of first-generation students.     

Does public infrastructure affect human capital? The effect of improved transport connectivity on children's education in the Philippines

While the literature acknowledges the importance of transport infrastructure and improved connectivity to economic growth, a less explored aspect is how these investments impact human capital. This paper seeks to address this gap by evaluating the impact of the Roll-on/Roll-off (Ro-Ro) policy -a policy that allowed for a more efficient mode of inter-island transfer within the country -on school attendance in the Philippines. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we compare the school attendance of children in municipalities near the Ro-Ro and the non-Ro-Ro ports over the span of ten years. Our results show consistent improvements in school attendance of males and females in the primary, secondary and tertiary level of education in areas near the Ro-Ro ports. We also observe a reduction in child employment, especially in males. Additional tests reveal that the Ro-Ro policy was able to affect children's education through increased household income in areas near the Ro-Ro ports.     

Does group composition affect learning by invention?

Schwartz and Martin (Cogn Instr 22:129?C184, 2004) as well as Kapur (Instr Sci, this issue, 2012) have found that students can be better prepared to learn about mathematical formulas when they try to invent them in small groups before receiving the canonical formula from a lesson. The purpose of the present research was to investigate how the effectiveness of invention activities may be mediated by composition of the small groups in terms of their mathematical skills. In two studies, small groups of undergraduates engaged in an ??inventing standard deviation?? task. Results suggested that groups may need at least one member with high math ability to take advantage of ??learning by invention??. Groups consisting of both high and low math ability members generated a broader range of solution attempts during the invention task, and this seemed to be related to better uptake of the standard deviation formula from a later lesson.     

Does student-teacher race match affect course grades?

A growing body of research has found that student-teacher race match is associated with higher test scores, teacher expectations, and teacher perceptions of students. This paper contributes to the student-teacher race match literature by investigating the effect of race match on course grades. To the extent that race match is associated with higher course grades for minority students, a more diverse teacher workforce is one mechanism that may help to narrow the achievement gap. Using a series of fixed effects models exploiting within-student variation across year and subject matter, I find that having a race-matched teacher is associated with a small but significant increase in course grade, on average. The positive effect of race match is driven largely by the experience of Black students.     

Does study abroad affect student academic achievement?

The numbers of UK students choosing to study abroad for a period has increased steadily over the years, with many students citing academic, professional, linguistic and cultural reasons as their key motivations. However, while there is an abundance of literature on the advantage of study abroad (SA) for linguistic learning, there is less known about the academic impact of studying abroad. In addition, because SA is largely a process of self-selection, this makes it difficult to derive unbiased estimates of its impact on academic achievement. Using data on students from a London-based Russell Group university, and categorising SA students as those who participated in credit-seeking SA programmes through Erasmus or bilateral/multilateral agreements with partner universities, this paper uses individual fixed effects to compare the post-SA grades for students who sojourned with their expected grades had they not sojourned, as well as with their non-SA counterparts. The results are quite robust across subgroups and indicate that grades in year 3 are less than expected for the SA group, given their pre-sojourn grades. To tackle the problem of self-selection, outcomes for SA students were compared to the group who applied but did not eventually study abroad, and to the outcomes for students who did not apply.     

Do parental attitudes toward and expectations for their children's education and future jobs matter for their children's school achievement?

The traditional discourse in the scholarship on cultural capital theory has focused on how exclusive participation in elite status culture by students from higher socioeconomic status families benefits their learning in schools, the effects of which are most evident in linguistic subject areas such as reading achievement. However, some scholars have argued that cultural capital is not restricted to elite status culture but could include parental familiarity with school evaluation standards and job market requirements, and that the effects could transcend languages to include performance domains with more objective evaluation that are susceptible to school influences (e.g. mathematics and science). The present study systematically examines this position using data involving 96,591 15‐year‐old students from 3602 schools in eight countries who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment 2012. Results of three‐level hierarchical linear modelling showed positive relationships between seven cultural capital variables and student mathematics achievement. The cultural variables comprised: home educational resources; parental educational attainment and occupational status; parental expectations of their children's educational attainment, future career in mathematics and school; and parental valuing of mathematics. In particular, the three parental expectations variables had substantively larger effect sizes on student achievement than the other cultural capital variables. The results demonstrated that parental familiarity with school evaluation standards and future job requirements, especially as measured by parental expectations, may constitute cultural capital that privileges student mathematics achievement in schools.