Changing Contexts, Changing Scores: Rethinking How School Transitions Matter

• In Event: 32.082 - Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: 32.082-21 - How Social Contexts Constrain and Promote Educational Opportunities

Abstract

When students transition to a new school, they change their social and academic context. In an era of increased school choice, it is important to better understand how changing contexts may influence students’ academic achievement and variation in students’ reactions to their new context. In the current study, we use data from a census of all students in Indiana public schools from 2009 through 2014 to investigate how the socioeconomic status context at students’ sending and receiving schools affect math achievement across the transition from elementary school to middle school. Preliminary findings suggest that students experience school poverty differently depending on the school poverty of their sending school.

Authors

• Amy G. Langenkamp, University of Notre Dame

• William Carbonaro, University of Notre Dame