Book Description

This report examines the effects of both student and school characteristics on mathematics and science achievement levels in the third, seventh, and eleventh grades using data from the 1985-86 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Analyses feature hierarchical linear models (HLM), a regression-like statistical technique that addresses the problem of students nested within schools by directly modeling within- and between-schools variation in achievement. Additionally, HLM allows examination of the impact of school characteristics on the relationship between student characteristics and achievement within schools. Following an executive summary, this report contains: (1) an introduction including information on the background and purpose of the study, a description of data sources and variables used in the analyses, and an outline of the methodological approach utilized; (2) a summary of the effects of school characteristics on mathematics achievement for each of the three grades with respect to the within-school model and the five between-school models; (3) a summary of the effects of school characteristics on science achievement for each of the three grades with respect to the within-school model and the five between-school models, enlarged with a comparison of mathematics and science results; (4) an extensive discussion of the findings in relation to methodological goals, grade level differences, school size, disassociation of socio-economic influences from race-ethnicity, tracking, gender differences, and teacher characteristics; and (5) appendices that include technical notes for the variables and the HLM methodology, descriptive statistics for selected characteristics, and supporting tables for the HLM results. In general, the school characteristics examined in the analyses provided better explanations for average achievement between schools than they did for the effects of gender, race-ethnicity, and socioeconomic status on achievement. (JJK)