A Half Century of Progress in US Student Achievement: Agency and Flynn Effects, Ethnic and SES Differences

Abstract

Policymakers, conceptualized here as principals, disagree as to whether US student performance has changed over the past half century. To inform conversations, agents administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math (m) and reading (rd) in 160 survey waves to national probability samples of cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. Estimated change in standard deviations (sd) per decade varies by agent (m: –0.10sd to 0.27sd, rd: –0.02sd to 0.12sd). Consistent with Flynn effects, median trends show larger gains in m (0.19sd) than in rd (0.04sd), though rates of progress for cohorts born since 1990 have increased in rd but slowed in m. Greater progress is shown by students tested at younger ages (m: 0.31sd, rd: 0.08sd) than when tested in middle years of schooling (m: 0.17sd, rd: 0.03sd) or toward the end of schooling (m: 0.06sd, rd: 0.02sd). Young white students progress more slowly (m: 0.28sd, rd: 0.09sd) than Asian (m: 46sd, rd: 0.28sd), black (m: 0.36sd, rd: 0.19sd), and Hispanic (m: 0.29sd, rd: 0.13sd) students. These ethnic differences generally attenuate as students age. Young students in the bottom quartile of the SES distribution show greater progress than those in the top quartile (difference in m: 0.08sd, in rd: 0.15sd), but the reverse is true for older students. Moderators likely include not only changes in families and schools but also improvements in nutrition, health care, and protection from contagious diseases and environmental risks. International data suggest that subject and age differentials may be due to moderators more general than just the United States.

It Runs in the Family: Testing for Longitudinal Family Flynn Effects

“…Our results show that mothers born later, on average, had children who showed greater increases in their PIAT math scores between the ages of 7 and 13, with children of mothers born earlier then catching up at later ages, suggesting that this PIAT math family Flynn effect in these data primarily occurred in young and middle childhood. This goes along with the results of Shakeel and Peterson ( 2022 ), who found larger child math Flynn effects at younger ages (around age 9) compared to early adolescence (around 13–15) and older ages (around 17). We found no Flynn effect for PIAT reading recognition, and a negative (reverse) Flynn effect for PIAT reading comprehension.…”

“… Kanaya et al ( 2005 ), on the other hand, found smaller effects for older children when they studied WISC scores of students who tested for admittance to special education. The latter corresponds to the findings of Shakeel and Peterson ( 2022 ), who found larger effects for younger children when analyzing the results of math and reading tests. In contrast, Salthouse ( 2015 ), studying adults, did not find any differential Flynn effects at different ages.…”

“… Ang et al ( 2010 ) examined sub-group Flynn effects for the NLSYC PIAT math test, and found that children in higher-income families, and children with higher-educated mothers, had stronger Flynn effects. Shakeel and Peterson ( 2022 ) found larger Flynn effects for higher SES groups among older students; however, they found smaller effects for higher SES groups among younger students (which they note may have been due to equal opportunity programs). The relationship between SES and cognitive ability is well-known (e.g., McCulloch and Joshi 2001 ; Nash 2001 ; Neiss et al 2002 ; Paterson 2021 ; Rodgers et al 2008 ), and an obvious explanation of our results may therefore be that higher-IQ mothers (and higher SES families) tend to start their families later.…”

Long-run Trends in the U.S. SES—Achievement Gap

“…There are, however, concerns about the use of tests that are not psychometrically linked and reliance on broadly defined parentaleducation categories that require extensive extrapolation outside observed SES levels. 6 In a recent analysis of psychometrically linked tests, Shakeel and Peterson (2022) report heterogeneity in achievement gains of U.S. students over the past half century by both ethnicity and by SES. Their SES index relies upon indicators of parental education and possessions in the household.…”

“…In sum, scholars have used a wide variety of surveys and a range of SES indicators to explore the trend in the size of the SES-achievement gap. One study relies on PISA (OECD (2018)), another on TIMSS (Broer, Bai, and Fonseca (2019)), two have used the Main NAEP (Bai, Straus, and Broer (2021); Hashim et al (2020)), one analyzes multiple tests (Shakeel and Peterson (2022)), and two have used a broad range of non-psychometrically linked tests (Reardon (2011); Chmielewski (2019)). Most have estimated SES with an index based upon information available from the survey, but two rely solely on income indicators (Reardon (2011); Hashim et al (2020)).…”