National Income, Income Inequality, and the Importance of Schools: A Hierarchical Cross-National Comparison

Abstract

The international and comparative education literature is not in agreement over the role of schools in student learning. The authors reexamine this debate across 25 diverse countries participating in the fourth-grade application of the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. The authors find the following: (a) In most cases, family background is more important than schools in understanding variations in student performance; (b) schools are nonetheless a significant source of variation in student performance, especially in poor and unequal countries; (c) in some cases, schools may bridge the achievement gap between high and low socioeconomic status children. However, schools' ability to do so is not systematically related to a country's economic or inequality status.

Opening the Black Box: Prospects for Using International Large-Scale Assessments to Explore Classroom Effects

“…Fuchs and Woessman (2007) found that approximately a quarter of the variation in performance between countries was due to the institutional characteristics of schools. The effect of these institutional characteristics varies considerably across countries (Chudgar & Luschei, 2009), supporting the argument of Suter (2000) that because countries vary in both educational institutions and educational performance, we have at least indirect evidence that educational policies can have a substantial effect on the overall performance of a nation's students.…”

“…The effect of family socioeconomic status (SES) was related to student achievement in the FIMS, indicating that the strong effect of family background noted in the contemporaneous Coleman Report (1966) was not restricted to the United States. More recent research has verified the continuing importance of family background to achievement in ILSAs (Baker et al, 2002;Woessman, 2004;Chudgar & Luschei, 2009;Montt, 2011). Methodological debates, particularly with respect to measuring SES, have resulted in varying estimates of SES-based inequality.…”

“…Sousa and Armor (2010) also found that school resources could shrink achievement gaps (see also Montt, 2011). However, whether this phenomenon persists -or indeed ever existed -has been called into question using many of the same individual-and school-level ILSA data (Baker et al, 2002;Chudgar & Luschei, 2009;Hanushek & Luque, 2003).…”

Fen ve Mühendislik Alanlarında Kariyer: Eğitim Sürecinde Kız Öğrenciler ve Çokdilli/Çokkültürlü Öğrencilerin Deneyimleri

“…Bazı araştırma sonuçlarına göre Türkiye gibi gelir dağılımının çok farklı olduğu ülkelerde öğrenci başarısında okul faktörü aile faktöründen daha önemli olmaktadır (Chudgar & Luschei, 2009). A.B.D.…”

Determinants of country differences in effects of parental education on children’s academic achievement

“…Given the increasing importance of education in the knowledge society, one hypothesis is that parents with a higher level of education will put more emphasis on their children's development of knowledge and skills than parents with a lower level of education, and this difference will be more pronounced in countries with a high level of social and economic development than in countries with a lower level of development (e.g., Baker et al 2002;Chudgar and Luschei 2009;Chiu 2007;Heyneman and Loxley 1982). We thus expect the relation between parental education and student achievement to increase as a function of the country level of social and economic development.…”