title: The increasing impact of socioeconomics and race on standardized academic test scores across elementary, middle, and high school.
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 be stymied by socioeconomic and racial factors and efforts to improve the achievement gap via testing have largely measured it.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
authors.forename: Gwyne W
authors.initials: GW
authors.lastname: White
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
authors.forename: Cesalie T
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Stepney
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
authors.forename: Danielle Ryan
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Hatchimonji
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
authors.forename: Dominic C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Moceri
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
authors.forename: Arielle V
authors.initials: AV
authors.lastname: Linsky
authors.affiliation: Division of Child Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center.
authors.forename: Jazmin A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Reyes-Portillo
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
authors.forename: Maurice J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Elias
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D004521:Educational Measurement / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008913:Minority Groups / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009515:New Jersey; D044469:Racial Groups / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012574:Schools / Q000458:organization & administration*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013334:Students / Q000706:statistics & numerical data