Do Education System Characteristics Moderate the Socioeconomic, Gender and Immigrant Gaps in Math and Science Achievement?

Katerina Bodovski,Volha Chykina,Ismael Munoz,Soo-Yong Byun

doi:10.17583/rise.2020.4807

Abstract

Using data from the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study for 45 countries, we examined the size of socioeconomic, gender, and immigrant status related gaps, and their relationships with education system characteristics, such as differentiation, standardization, and proportion of governmental spending on education. We find that higher socioeconomic status is positively and significantly associated with higher math and science achievement; immigrant students lag behind their native peers in both math and science, with first generation students faring worse than second generation; and girls show lower math performance than boys. A higher degree of differentiation makes socioeconomic gaps larger in both math and science achievement, whereas higher governmental spending reduces socioeconomic achievement gaps.

Highlights

Using data from the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study for 45 countries, we examined the size of socioeconomic, gender, and immigrant status related gaps, and their relationships with education system characteristics, such as differentiation, standardization, and proportion of governmental spending on education
We link these gaps to differentiation, standardization, and percent of governmental spending on education, examining whether these features of the education systems moderate the stratification of math and science achievement
Using data from the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) for 45 countries, we examined the socioeconomic, gender and immigrant status related gaps in math and science achievement

Summary

Introduction

Using data from the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study for 45 countries, we examined the size of socioeconomic, gender, and immigrant status related gaps, and their relationships with education system characteristics, such as differentiation, standardization, and proportion of governmental spending on education. Country-level: β00k = γ000 + γ001(STAk) + γ002(DIFk) + γ003(SPEk) + γ004(GDPk) + u00k (3) β10k = γ100 + γ101(STAk) + γ102(DIFk) + γ103(SPEk) + γ104(GDPk) + u10k β20k = γ200 + γ201(STAk) + γ202(DIFk) + γ203(SPEk) + γ204(GDPk) + u20k β30k = γ300 + γ301(STAk) + γ302(DIFk) + γ303(SPEk) + γ304(GDPk) + u30k where ACHijk is students’ academic achievement (i.e., math and science achievement) for student i in school j in country k; GENijk is gender; IMMijk is immigration status; SESijk is the socioeconomic status index.

Results

Conclusion