A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Do Home Factors Explain the High Achievement of the FiW Consortium?

As mentioned earlier, the districts that make up the FiW Consortium are high wealth districts. The question that naturally arises is: Could student and family background characteristics explain the differences in achievement between the FiW Consortium and the U.S.?

To examine this question, an exploratory analysis was conducted using TIMSS achievement and student and family characteristics data.¹⁷ The analysis identified a set of student and family variables included in the TIMSS' questionnaires that were found to be highly correlated with student math achievement. These variables included parents' education level, whether the student's parents were born in the U.S., language spoken at home, and number of books in the home.

A set of regression analyses were run to estimate the difference between the FiW and U.S. scores not attributable to home and family characteristics (in scale points) for the fourth and eighth grades in math and science, and the twelfth grade for general knowledge of math and science.

These exploratory analyses showed that the point differences between the FiW and U.S. students' scores could not be fully attributed to students' home and family characteristics.

In fourth-grade math and eighth-grade math and science, socio-economic factors explained approximately 20 to 25 percent of the difference in scale scores, but left 75 to 80 percent unexplained.

Family and parental characteristics could account for slightly more of the difference in eighth-grade science, and twelfth-grade math and science. In these cases, half of the difference is attributable to family and home factors.

There are, however, some immeasurable effects of resource rich districts that may not be well measured by this analysis-a more stable teaching force, high levels of involvement from parents, and high expectations for students.

These factors may play as important a role as that of high financial resource levels in promoting high achievement. In fact, some believe that one of the explanations for the high achievement levels in FiW districts is how they use their wealth to support teaching and learning, not the wealth itself.

While further analysis may give more precise estimates of the relationship between achievement and socio-economic status in the FiW Consortium, this analysis and results from other preliminary analyses¹⁸ indicate that other factors, such as curriculum, classroom instructional practices, and teacher engagement, play an important role in their high achievement levels.

The next section explores some of the other factors that may have contributed to the Consortium's success.

-###-

[ How Well Did the FiW Consortium Perform When Benchmarked Against an International Measure of Math and Science Achievement ]

[ What is the Context for Teaching and Learning Math in the FiW Consortium? ]

This page last modified on November 23, 1999. (dtm)