Socioeconomic Inequality and Educational Outcomes: Evidence from Twenty Years of TIMSS. IEA Research for Education. Volume 5

This open access book focuses on trends in educational inequality using twenty years of grade 8 student data collected from 13 education systems by the IEA’s Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) between 1995 and 2015. While the overall positive association between family socioeconomic status (SES) and student achievement is well documented in the literature, the magnitude of this relationship is contingent on social contexts and is expected to vary by education system. Research on how such associations differ across societies and how the strength of these relationships has changed over time is limited. This study, therefore, addresses an important research and policy question by examining changes in the inequality of educational outcomes due to SES over this 20-year period, and also examines the extent to which the performance of students from disadvantaged backgrounds has improved over time in each education system. Education systems generally aim to narrow the achievement gap between low- and high-SES students and to improve the performance of disadvantaged students. However, the lack of quantifiable and comprehensible measures makes it difficult to assess and monitor the effect of such efforts. In this study, a novel measure of SES that is consistent across all TIMSS cycles allows students to be categorized into different socioeconomic groups. This measure of SES may also contribute to future research using TIMSS trend data. Readers will gain new insight into how educational inequality has changed in the education systems studied and how such change may relate to the more complex picture of macroeconomic changes in those societies. The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA) mission is to enhance knowledge about education systems worldwide and to provide high-quality data that will support education reform and lead to better teaching and learning in schools. In pursuit of this aim, it conducts and reports on major studies of student achievement in literacy, mathematics, science, citizenship, and digital literacy. IEA studies, most notably Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS), and International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), have set the benchmark for international comparative studies in education. These well-established studies have generated vast datasets encompassing student achievement, disaggregated in a variety of ways, along with a wealth of contextual information which contains considerable explanatory power. The numerous reports that have emerged from them represent an invaluable contribution to the corpus of educational research. Nevertheless, IEA's goal of supporting education reform needs something more: deep understanding of education systems and the many factors that bear on student learning advances through in-depth analysis of the global datasets. The IEA Research for Education series represents a further effort by IEA to capitalize on these unique datasets, so as to provide powerful information for policymakers and researchers. Each report focuses on a specific topic and is produced by a dedicated team of leading scholars on the theme in question. This fifth volume in the series is concerned with socioeconomic inequality and educational outcomes. Socioeconomic status is a key variable in social science research. It is especially important to the understanding of educational inequality and how best to address it. There is a substantial literature on the links between students' educational achievement and their family background. Despite this, challenges in measuring socioeconomic status and identifying its impact persist. This book draws on data collected over 20 years in the IEA Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) and scrutinizes student achievement levels in relation to their socioeconomic status. Besides achievement data, TIMSS has been collecting background information from students, teachers, and school principals. Using a modified version of the TIMSS home educational resources index, the authors have identified tentative patterns in the changes over time. Specifically, they have established which countries have seen greater educational inequality attributable to family background and which have seen a reduction. They also identify which countries have managed to increase the academic performance of disadvantaged students over the period and those which have not. [For volume 4, see ED588363.] This study compared the SES achievement gaps of 13 education systems in both mathematics and science over time. Each education system was initially categorized as either a system with "increasing SES achievement gaps" or "decreasing SES achievement gaps," based on 20-year trends in the IEA's Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). For example, achievement gaps between low- and high-SES students significantly widened over this time in Hungary, Islamic Republic of Iran, Lithuania, and Singapore, while in Norway, Slovenia, and the United States, student achievement gaps in either mathematics or science narrowed between 1995 and 2015. Education system specific graphs show trends in the achievement gaps between high- and low-SES students, as well as trends for low-SES students reaching the TIMSS intermediate benchmark over time. Monitoring intermediate changes between 1995 and 2003, and between 2003 and 2015, as well as in-depth analysis of relevant country-specific macroeconomic indicators for each education system, provides further context. [Publisher summary] Front Matter ....Pages i-viii Socioeconomic Inequality and Educational Outcomes: An Introduction (Markus Broer, Yifan Bai, Frank Fonseca)....Pages 1-6 A Review of the Literature on Socioeconomic Status and Educational Achievement (Markus Broer, Yifan Bai, Frank Fonseca)....Pages 7-17 Methodology: Constructing a Socioeconomic Index for TIMSS Trend Analyses (Markus Broer, Yifan Bai, Frank Fonseca)....Pages 19-34 Socioeconomic Achievement Gaps: Trend Results for Education Systems (Markus Broer, Yifan Bai, Frank Fonseca)....Pages 35-70 Trends in Socioeconomic Achievement Gaps in the Macroeconomic Context: Discussion and Future Research (Markus Broer, Yifan Bai, Frank Fonseca)....Pages 71-80 Back Matter ....Pages 81-83