ABSTRACT
Researchers’ ability to evaluate relationships between school resources and educational achievement has been greatly enhanced by the federal government’s sponsorship of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also called “The Nation’s Report Card.” Correlation and regression analyses using NAEP data offer valuable insights into the potential impact of resources on achievement.
The simple correlations between eighth-grade math scores and numerous student, teacher, and school characteristics show that student background is much more strongly related to achievement than school and teacher characteristics. Being on free lunch, having limited English, number of home appliances, and father’s education have correlations of −0.38, −0.25, +0.44, and +0.37, respectively. In contrast, the strongest correlations for school resources are −0.14, +0.13, and +0.08 for teachers with tenure, years taught math, and teachers with math majors/minors.
Regression analyses show that school and teacher characteristics have much weaker effects on student achievement after controlling for student background. The strongest effects are only 0.05 for years taught math and 0.04 for teachers with a math major/minor. These results vary little across racial and socioeconomic subgroups. While measures of school racial composition have the strongest effects on achievement, Chapter 11 explains why these are largely artifacts of aggregation.
