Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2016
Journal / Book Title
American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
Abstract
For students and schools, the current policy is to measure success via standardized testing. Yet the immutable factors of socioeconomic status (SES) and race have, consistently, been implicated in fostering an achievement gap. The current study explores, at the school-level, the impact of these factors on test scores. Percentage of students proficient for Language and Math was analyzed from 452 schools across the state of New Jersey. By high school, 52% of the variance in Language and 59% in Math test scores can be accounted for by SES and racial factors. At this level, a 1% increase in school minority population corresponds to a 0.19 decrease in percent Language proficient and 0.33 decrease for Math. These results have significant implications as they suggest that school-level interventions to improve academic achievement scores will bestymied by socioeconomic and racial factors and efforts to improve the achievement gap via testing have largely measured it.
DOI
10.1037/ort0000122
MSU Digital Commons Citation
White, Gwyne W.; Stepney, Cesalie T.; Hatchimonji, Danielle Ryan; Moceri, Dominic C.; Linsky, Arielle V.; Reyes-Portillo, Jazmin; and Elias, Maurice J., "The Increasing Impact of Socioeconomics and Race On Standardized Academic Test Scores Across Elementary, Middle, and High School" (2016). Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 508.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/psychology-facpubs/508
Published Citation
White, G. W., Stepney, C. T., Hatchimonji, D. R., Moceri, D. C., Linsky, A. V., Reyes-Portillo, J. A., & Elias, M. J. (2016). The increasing impact of socioeconomics and race on standardized academic test scores across elementary, middle, and high school. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 86(1), 10.