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This article compares the effects of family background and school resources on fourth-grade students' math achievement, using data from the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In order to ameliorate potential floor effects, it uses relative risk and population attributable risk to examine the effects of family background and low levels of school resources. Four findings stand out: (1) the percentage of vulnerable students decreases as GDP increases, but this relationship weakens at higher levels of GDP; (2) the relative risk associated with low socioeconomic status is positively related to GDP, but the relative risk associated with low school resources is unrelated to GDP; (3) the population attributable risk associated with some of the family and school risk factors tends to fall with rising GDP, but varies considerably amongst countries; and (4) family background effects are stronger than school resource effects in low- and high-income countries.

The purpose of this study was to examine both the family antecedents and the outcomes of early puberty, with a particular focus on factors related to family socioeconomic status (SES). The study employed a comprehensive measurement of pubertal development and longitudinal data from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. The sample (N = 8,440; 49% girls) included four cohorts of children who were followed biennially for 10 years, starting from age 4-11 to 14-21 years. Data were drawn at different years of age from these cohorts of children. Girls whose fathers were unemployed were more likely to experience early puberty than those whose fathers were employed. For boys, those living with fathers who had not finished secondary school were more likely to experience early puberty. Early maturing girls tended to engage in smoking and drinking at an earlier age compared with their peers. These findings provide support for psychosocial acceleration theory and suggest that different aspects of low family SES may act as a psychosocial stress for early pubertal maturation in boys versus girls, which may lead to engagement in drinking and smoking at a younger age, at least for girls.

There has been a long-lasting debate of whether the effects of family background are larger than those of school resources, and whether these effects are a function of national income level. In this study, we bring a new perspective to the debate by using the concepts of relative risk and population attributable risk in estimating family and school effects. The study uses data from the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA), a large international comparative study of the skills of 15-year-old students in 43 countries. The study finds that: (1) there is a curvilinear association between family effects, measured by both relative and attributable risk, and national income level; (2) there is no association between school effects and national income level; (3) the risk associated with low levels of family background is larger than that of low levels of school resources, regardless of national income level. (Contains 4 graphs and 3 tables.)

In this study we distinguished between two forms of cultural capital, one that is static, representing the highbrow activities and practices of parents, and one that is relational, representing cultural interactions and communication between children and their parents. We used data for 28 countries from the 2000 Programme for International Student Assessment to examine whether these two types of cultural capital were associated with students' reading literacy, sense of belonging at school, and occupational aspirations, after controlling for traditional measures of socioeconomic status. We examined whether one type of cultural capital had stronger effects than the other and whether their effects differed across outcomes and across countries. The results provide compelling evidence that dynamic cultural capital has strong effects on students' schooling outcomes, while static cultural capital has more modest effects. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)

Background: Findings from several international studies have shown that there is a significant relationship between literacy skills and socioeconomic status (SES). Research has also shown that schools differ considerably in their student outcomes, even after taking account of students' ability and family background. The context or learning environment of a school or classroom is an important determinant of the rate at which children learn. The literature has traditionally used school composition, particularly the mean SES of the school, as a proxy for context. Focus of Study: This study examines the relationships among school composition, several aspects of school and classroom context, and students' literacy skills in science. Population: The study uses data from the 2006 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) for 57 countries. PISA assesses the knowledge and life skills of 15-year-old youth as they approach the end of their compulsory period of schooling. Research Design: Secondary analyses of the data describe the socioeconomic gradient (the relationship between a student outcome and SES) and the school profile (the relationship between average school performance and school composition) using data for the United States as an example. The analyses demonstrate two important relationships between school composition and the socioeconomic gradient and distinguish between two types of segregation, referred to as horizontal and vertical segregation. The analyses discern the extent to which school composition and classroom and school context separately and jointly account for variation in student achievement. Findings: The results show that school composition is correlated with several aspects of school and classroom context and that these factors are associated with students' science literacy. Literacy performance is associated with the extent to which school systems are segregated "horizontally," based on the distribution among schools of students from differing SES backgrounds, and "vertically," due mainly to mechanisms that select students into different types of schools. Conclusions: An understanding of socioeconomic gradients and school profiles for a school system is critical to discerning whether reform efforts should be directed mainly at improving the performance of particular schools or at striving to alter policies and practices within all schools. Both horizontal and vertical segregation are associated with lower student outcomes; therefore, we require a better understanding of the mechanisms through which students are allocated to schools. When the correlation of school composition with a particular contextual variable is strong, it calls for policies aimed at increasing inclusion or differentially allocating school and classroom resources among schools serving students of differing status.

The Early Years Evaluation (EYE) program is intended to help teachers to evaluate the skills of children from three to six years. This article discusses two new skills assessments of the EYE program: (1) the Early Years Evaluation-Direct Assessment (EYE-DA); and (2) the Early Years Evaluation-Teacher Assessment (EYE-TA). The EYE-DA evaluates aspects of early child development in four developmental domains (12 skills per domain) closely related to emerging literacy skills and children's success at school: (1) awareness of self and environment; (2) cognitive skills; (3) language and communication; and (4) physical development. A complementary assessment, the EYE-TA, assesses the same domains as the EYE-DA, but also includes a set of questions on children's social skills, behaviour and approaches to learning. An essential feature of the EYE-DA and EYE-TA is that they focus on the "skills" enabling children to benefit from school instruction. This differs from the popular teacher perception scales in which teachers rate children's performance in relation to their peers. (Contains 3 notes.)

Objectives: This study reports on the concept and method of linear propensity scores used to obtain a comparison group from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth to assess the effects of a longitudinal, structured arts program for Canadian youth (aged 9 to 15 years) from low-income, multicultural communities. Method: This study compares 183 children in a community arts project to 183 children from a national longitudinal survey using propensity score matching. The variables included baseline scores of child-rated conduct problems, indirect aggression, emotional problems, self-esteem, and prosocial behavior and child gender, person most knowledgeable (PMK) education, PMK marital status, household income, and family functioning. Results: Mean score comparison showed that the groups were very similar on all covariates. Conclusions: Propensity score matching offers an alternative to true randomization that is cost-effective and convenient, particularly important for social work research in community-based organizations with a limited budget. (Contains 2 tables.)

Four myths that underlie persistent, but ineffective, practices in early literacy education are analyzed in this article. Such analysis is essential because literacy disadvantage ultimately is an issue of equity--a matter of social justice. Research shows that these practices can be refuted and that optimal early literacy outcomes are possible for all students when parents, teachers, and school administrators serve as agents of equity.

This study examined how the link between neighborhood poverty and the timing of sexual initiation varies as a function of age, gender, and background characteristics. A sample of N = 2,596 predominately White Canadian adolescents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth was used. Sexual initiations occurring between 12 and 15 years old were considered. Results showed that younger adolescent females who lived in poor neighborhoods and who had a history of conduct problems were more likely to report early sexual activity. Peer characteristics partly accounted for this susceptibility. Among adolescent males, no direct neighborhood effects were found, but those who had combined risks at multiple levels appeared more vulnerable. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

This article presents an outcome-based model for evaluating school and community programs serving at-risk adolescents, and a cost-effective technique for comparing the progress of youth receiving an intervention with youth in a pseudocontrol group. The outcomes considered most important for success were derived from the literature pertaining to at-risk youth, consultations with stakeholders who work with at-risk youth, and program leaders and teachers involved in a local program for youth disaffected from school. The analytic strategy entails matching children to comparable individuals participating in Canada's National Longitudinal Study of Children and Youth (Statistics Canada & Human Resources Development Canada, 1995). We provide information on the survey instruments used, discuss their reliability and validity, and describe our data collection issues and procedures. We conclude with the strengths, limitations, and implications of our approach for further research. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)

Because youth gangs tend to cluster in disadvantaged neighborhoods, adolescents living in such neighborhoods are more likely to encounter opportunities to join youth gangs. However, in the face of these opportunities, not all adolescents respond in the same manner. Those with preexisting psychopathic tendencies might be especially likely to join. In this study, we tested whether a combination of individual propensity and facilitating neighborhood conditions amplifies the probabilities of youth gang affiliation. A subset of 3,522 adolescents was selected from a nationally representative, prospective sample of Canadian youth. Psychopathic tendencies (i.e., a combination of high hyperactivity, low anxiety, and low prosociality as compared to national norms) were assessed through parent reports, while neighborhood characteristics (i.e., concentrated economic disadvantage and residential instability) were derived from the 2001 Census of Canada. Our results indicated that neighborhood residential instability, but not neighborhood concentrated economic disadvantage, interacted with individual propensity to predict youth gang membership. Adolescents with preexisting psychopathic tendencies appeared especially vulnerable mainly if they were raised in residentially unstable neighborhoods.

Most children who do not learn to read during the primary grades will probably never learn to read well. Children who reach the end of third grade with low literacy skills typically have less access to the regular curriculum, require long-term support, and fall further behind their peers in literacy achievement and curricular knowledge. However, children experiencing reading difficulties can be identified early and, with appropriate early intervention during the primary grades, can learn to read. This article discusses a five-year pilot program aimed at lowering the rate of reading failure at the K-2 level. The pilot program involves implementing a school-based, continuous monitoring system during those crucial years to assist teachers in the early identification of children who encounter difficulty in their literacy development. This early literacy monitoring program, currently in its third year of data collection, is being piloted in Canada's 20 public schools and six federal First Nations schools. It responds to needs expressed by teachers, department officials, and school administrators and provides a mechanism for keeping parents apprised of their children's progress. (Contains 8 end notes.)

This study drew on four cycles of longitudinal data from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth to examine the academic and behavioural trajectories of youth between 10 and 15 years of age as a function of maternal age at childbearing. The analyses controlled for several family characteristics and examined the mediating effects of three family functioning variables (maternal depression, and nurturing and rejecting parenting behaviours). Maternal age was related to academic competency in math (standardized Math scores), externalizing disorders (Property Offences, Hyperactivity-Inattention), and internalizing disorders (Anxiety-Emotional Disorder). After accounting for family characteristics, the children of the young and older teen mothers retained their disadvantage in Math scores and Property Offences, respectively, whereas the children of older mothers lost the advantages that they had exhibited at age 10 (for Property Offences, the benefits were mediated through family functioning). These results have implications for future research and for the development of policy and programming targeting the healthy development of youth.

In Serbia there are four levels of education: pre-school (until 7 years of age); primary education consisting of eight grades (ages 7-14); secondary education lasting two, three or four years; and higher education lasting from three to six years. Primary education is compulsory for all children. It consists of two cycles, each lasting four years, with the first cycle including grades 1-4, and the second cycle including grades 5-8. About 93% of students who finish primary school continue education in a secondary school. This paper examines the process used in Serbia to select students into different types of secondary schools. In this study the authors are concerned with whether the selection process favours students from higher socio-economic groups or either boys or girls. They linked longitudinal data from Serbian student records to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data collected on student performance in 2003. Three important findings emerged. First, the distributions of both classroom grades and the selection examination scores are substantially negatively skewed, indicating that the range of scores below the mean extends much further than the high scores extend above it. Second, females and students from higher socio-economic backgrounds do substantially better on both classroom assessments and on the selection examinations. The gap between boys and girls is larger for children from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. Third, after boys enter secondary school, their scores on the PISA mathematics test and their combined scores are much better in relative terms than their earlier classroom grades or selection examination scores. However, this bias was not evident with respect to SES. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)

One of the most frequently studied factors relating to the rise of educational inequalities is the selectivity of the education system. Selectivity often gives rise to inequalities in educational opportunities. The Czech Republic exhibits large inequalities in educational achievement and relatively steep socio-economic gradients in all international comparative studies. The combination of high educational inequalities, a strong relationship with socioeconomic background, and high selectivity of the education system is regarded by Czech society as fairly acceptable. Moreover, lowering education inequalities is not a critical issue for Czech education policy-makers. As a result, some of the currently adopted measures of education policy threaten to strengthen the inequalities to an even higher extent. In this study, the authors aim to bring more empirical evidence to the issue of educational inequalities with attention to the structure of the system based on the data from international large-scale surveys. The authors pose two sets of questions. The first set is concerned with the extent to which tracking produces these inequalities: What is the magnitude of education inequalities at different levels of the education system? What are the differences among students in different types of schools? The second set of questions is concerned with regional inequalities in educational achievement, and how these may contribute to overall levels of inequality. To what extent do results differ among regions for students in their last year of lower secondary school? Do characteristics of the populations living in these regions explain some of the variation? (Contains 2 tables and 3 figures.)

Results from the 2000 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Assessment (PISA) indicated that inequalities in performance associated with students' family background were relatively large in Switzerland compared to other participating countries. The study upon which this article is based examines the relationships between literacy performance and family background for Switzerland in greater detail. Particular attention is given to the variation in this relationship among the German-, French-, and Italian-speaking jurisdictions, and among cantons within the French- and Italian-speaking regions. The study uses data for 6,100 15-year-old students who participated in the main PISA study, and for 5,730 students who participated in a supplemental study of grade-9 students in the French- and Italian-speaking regions. The analysis employs multilevel statistical techniques to examine the relationships among students within classrooms, and among classrooms within cantons. The findings that emerged from the study have important implications for school policy in Switzerland. (Contains 8 figures and 4 tables.)

In view of the current emphasis on teachers' contextual assessment of emergent literacy skills, we need to determine the degree to which such assessments are valid judgments about children's early literacy skill development. One approach to this issue would be to examine closely the relationship between teacher ratings of literacy skills and student performance on individually-administered standardized measures with prior evidence of construct validity. In this study, we examine this issue by investigating the discrepancy between assessment information derived from teacher ratings and from formal tests, and by analyzing the variables that influence teacher judgments and their contextual assessments of kindergarten students' emergent literacy skills. In this study, we compared outcomes derived from teacher ratings of emergent literacy skills with those obtained on standardized direct measures with multiple sources of validity evidence. We collaborated with teachers in nine different schools to assess the emergent literacy skills of 205 kindergarten students using the two assessment measures: the Teacher Rating Scale, and the Word Reading subtest of the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test. Findings reveal systematic discrepancy between kindergarten teachers' ratings of students' emergent literacy skills and students' performance on a standardized direct measure with prior evidence of construct validity. Although the measures assess the same constructs, teachers' ratings of emergent literacy skills are severe in comparison with results derived from direct assessment. Results suggest that the use of teacher rating scales and checklists in early literacy assessment may have both positive and negative implications. On the positive side, there is a moderately strong positive correlation between the teacher rating scale of literacy skills, the TRS, and a psychometrically sound measure of emergent literacy with prior validity evidence, the WIAT-II Word Reading subtest. On the negative side, TRS ratings are affected by child and family characteristics despite best efforts to circumvent bias and diminish measurement error. Our findings, and those of other researchers, point to the need for further study of the influence of extraneous variables on teachers' contextual assessment of emergent literacy skills. (Contains 1 note.)

In 1997, the Santiago office of UNESCO implemented an assessment of student achievement in Latin America, working in collaboration with 13 Latin American ministries of education. Using a common sampling methodology and survey instruments, researchers in each country collected representative samples of data on third- and fourth-grade achievement in language and mathematics, as well as background surveys from students, parents, teachers, and principals. This article uses these data and multilevel modeling to assess the relative effectiveness of private and public schools in 10 of these countries. In particular, the article argues that many prior studies have misrepresented the private school effect by failing to control for the characteristics of student peer groups. In these studies, the achievement gap between the two sectors may partly or entirely reflect the effects of better peer group characteristics, as opposed to any substantive impact of private school practices or efficiency on the outcomes of their students. The results suggest that conditioning on a complete set of student, family, and peer characteristics explains a large portion of the observed difference in achievement between public and private schools. Across the 10 countries considered in this article, the mean private school effect is approximately zero, ranging between -0.2 and 0.2 standard deviations. The relative consistency of the findings is striking, given the diversity in the size and institutional features of the private sector across countries.

Seven dimensions of school disciplinary climate were identified based on a representative sample of grade 8 students in the United States. Within schools, students varied considerably in their perceptions and experiences about discipline. The variation was related mainly to students' socioeconomic status (SES), sex, and ethnicity. There was a significant contextual effect of school mean SES on disciplinary climate, larger than the individual effect of SES. Schools with primary or intermediate grades tended to have more favorable disciplinary climates than either junior or senior high schools. School location had small effects on disciplinary climate. The disciplinary measure with the strongest relationship to academic achievement pertained to classroom disruption.

How can we help all children learn what they need to know to prepare for the future? In every country/region that is participating in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a study of the literacy skills of 15-year-old youth, there is a huge gap between the best and worst performing students. This shows the need for parents, educators, administrators, and policy-makers to direct their efforts toward leveling the playing field. This article examines variation among countries/regions and schools in their reading performance, with particular attention to the remarkable success of students in Hong Kong. It also suggests ways to narrow the gap and raise the learning bar for all.

In all countries that participated in the IALS, there is a strong relationship between the literacy skills of youth and family socioeconomic status. This relationship is referred to a socioeconomic gradient. One of the key findings of studies that examined socioeconomic gradients within countries is that gradients tend to converge at higher levels of socioeconomic status; that is, youth from advantaged backgrounds tend to do well in any jurisdiction, while those from less advantaged backgrounds vary considerably in their proficiency among jurisdictions. This paper summarizes the evidence for converging socioeconomic gradients stemming from research based on the IALS, and discusses its policy implications.

Findings from two studies indicate that the nature of Canadian children's environments within their families, schools, neighborhoods, and communities has very strong effects on children's development and the prevalence of childhood vulnerability. Rather than stemming primarily from poverty, childhood vulnerability may arise from the environments in which children are raised. (TD)

Statistical analysis of the relationships between three schooling outcomes and family background in 13 Latin American countries employing data from 1996 study. Finds that while the relationship between schooling outcomes and family background varies among countries, the most effective schools share similar characteristics, for example, high levels of school resources and classrooms with a positive climate. (Contains 42 references.) (PKP)

Explores whether standards-based reform can drive school improvement using data from two Canadian monitoring systems to illustrate the main points. Outlines some of the dilemmas associated with monitoring and offers suggestions about how to tighten the link between monitoring and learning. Whether performance based assessment increases student learning is still an open question. (SLD)

Examined parent-school cooperation initiatives across Canada by interviewing representatives from the provincial Departments of Education and analyzing government documents and literature. Results indicated that there has been considerable policy development and legislation leading to parent advisory committees, but movement related to parenting, volunteering, home learning, and community involvement is slower. (SM)

Describes the context of parent advisory councils in Canada, which were formed as the result of legislation to increase parental communication and authority in the schools. Discusses three aspects of the challenge to increase parent participation in the schools: establishing parents' authority as decision makers, expanding parents' roles, and widening the constituency of involved parents. (JPB)