The Relationship between School Resources and Grade 8 Mathematics Achievement: A Comparison of Palestinian Authority, Israeli Hebrew and Israeli Arab Schools in TIMSS 2007

Abstract

The relationship between school resources such as learning materials, computers, and student-teacher ratio and student performance has been shown to be important (e.g., Hanushek, 1986, 2003; Hanushek & Woessmann, 2007; Krueger, 2003). In this article, school resources and their relationship with student achievement are compared for Israeli and Palestinian Authority (PA) schools using data from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s (IEA) 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in the context of efforts aimed at reducing the differences in resources in schools in Israel. Results of bivariate analyses show some differences regarding the availability of school resources between the three groups of schools under review, namely PA schools, Israeli Arab schools and Israeli Hebrew schools. Moreover, results of the multivariate hierarchical linear model analyses reveal that only shortages regarding computer hardware, software and support have a significant relationship with mathematics achievement of Grade 8 students once the socio-economic level of their schools and home backgrounds are taken into account. Finally, these effects are found for the Israeli Arab schools and the PA schools but not for the Israeli Hebrew schools.