Beyond Race and Poverty: Measuring School Disadvantage Using Proximal Measures of Students’ Opportunity to Learn

• In Event: Roundtable Session 18.
  In Roundtable Session: Family, Parents, and Community: Changes in the Terrain of School Environments

Abstract

School poverty and race are often used to identify a school as being “disadvantaged.” We develop a more proximal measure of school and schooling processes that we think affect student learning. Our measure of school challenge integrates measures of school culture, professional community, leadership, school conditions like attendance and behavior, neighborhood safety, and limited English proficiency. We use this measure in answering the questions: 1) To what extent is “school challenge” capturing something different than school race/income in identifying schools as “disadvantaged”? 2) How do elementary students’ achievement trajectories vary based on the level of school, and is there evidence of cumulative disadvantage among students who remain in highly challenged schools throughout elementary school?

Authors

• Kailey Lauren Spencer, University of Pennsylvania

• Elizabeth A. Covay, Michigan State University

• Laura M. Desimone, University of Pennsylvania

• Kristie J.R. Phillips, Brigham Young University