Characteristics of Students Performing Below Basic

• In Event: In-Depth Analysis of Eighth-Grade Students Performing Below Basic in the National Assessment of Educational Progress

Abstract

This presentation describes characteristics of grade 8 students with below Basic performance in the 2015 NAEP mathematics assessment. The first half of this presentation focuses on these students’ characteristics compared to those of students at the Basic, Proficient, or Advanced levels. Those characteristics include the percentage distribution by race/ethnicity, gender, students with disabilities (SD) and/or English language learners (ELL) status, eligibility for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), and status of accommodation rate/usage. The second half focuses on the characteristics within subgroups of students with below Basic performance. Due to the broad score distribution of students with below Basic performance (104 to 261) we further identified four subgroups of students corresponding to the quartiles of performance within the below Basic score range and analyzed characteristics associated with quartile membership. Lastly, the presentation briefly discusses these students’ mathematics course-taking patterns and attitudes about mathematics.

Table 1 shows the percentage distribution of grade 8 students by achievement level and student characteristics from 2015 NAEP mathematics assessment. Regarding race/ethnicity (cf. table 1-A), whereas 18% of White students and 12% of Asian students performed below the Basic level, 52% of Black students, 40% of Hispanic students, 43% of American Indian/Alaska Native students, 37% of Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander students, and 26% of students with two or more races performed below Basic. Table 1-B shows the distribution of students within below Basic and other achievement levels. For example, there are significantly more male (52%) than female (48%) below Basic students. Regarding NSLP eligibility, a larger percentage of students with below Basic performance are NSLP eligible (71%) compared to those with Basic (51%), Proficient (30%), or Advanced (15%). Also, a significantly larger percentage of students with SD (28%) and ELL status (14%) are in the below Basic performance category when compared to the other achievement levels (e.g., students with SD (8%) and ELL status (4%) at the Basic level). Also, NAEP provides multiple accommodations for students with SD and ELL status (e.g., extended time, dictionaries, etc.). Whereas 30% of students with below Basic performance received one or more accommodations, less than 10% of students did so at the other three achievement levels.

Table 2 represents the percentage distribution of grade 8 students with below Basic performance, by quartiles and student characteristics. A larger percentage of males is at the lowest quartile than the highest quartile. Also, the higher percentages of Black and Hispanic students in the lower quartiles of the below Basic distribution were observed compared to the highest. Whereas only 8% of the highest quartile are ELL students, 24% are in the lowest.

Finally, there are differences in subject-specific contexts between students with below Basic performance and those at the other achievement levels. Among students at below Basic level, for example, a smaller percentage take Algebra I while a larger percentage take basic or general math (table 3). Similarly, there is a smaller percentage of below Basic students who agree or strongly agree that they like math than in all the other achievement levels (figure 2).

Author

• Jonathan Phelan, American Institutes for Research