Examining Predictors of Academic Growth in Secondary School among Academically-Advanced Youth across 21 Years. Working Paper 2018-2

Many academically-advanced youth take the ACT® test in 7th grade for academic talent searches and again in 11th or 12th grade for college admissions. We leveraged this sample of 460,033 students, taking an exploratory analytic approach to examine trends in academic growth from 1996 to 2016. We examined potential predictors of academic growth, including sociodemographics, interests, high school characteristics, high school coursework and GPA, and extracurriculars. We find these variables account for 29% of the explainable variance in academic growth. Overall, growth improved from 2005 to 2016, but growth for low-income and Hispanic students was stagnant. Students attending Catholic and private schools had the highest growth, whereas homeschooled students and students attending high-poverty public schools showed lowest growth. Elective high school courses in STEM subjects were associated with higher growth, and advanced AP, accelerated, or honors courses were associated with significantly higher growth. In addition, students with Investigative and Conventional interests had higher growth. Some extracurriculars had significant relationships with academic growth, though the effects were small. Factors that had a positive impact on the academic growth trend across time included fewer students being schooled in rural areas, students earning higher grades, more students taking STEM and advanced courses, and an increase in Investigative interests. We discuss leverage points for educational intervention to improve academic growth among academically-advanced students. Better understanding how to improve academic growth in this population can lead to significant improvements in their personal fulfillment and academic achievement as well as societal innovation and GDP.