Success in Context: How Student and School Characteristics Jointly Impact Advanced Placement Exam Performance

• In Event: Measurement and Methodological Challenges and Treatments in Large-Scale Database Analyses

Abstract

The purpose was to understand how student and school characteristics work together to influence students' success on Advanced Placement (AP) exams. The study combines complete student-level AP exam and demographic data with complete school-level data from the national School Universe Survey. Generalized mixed models were estimated for each of four AP exams, with the outcome of passing. The models included seven fixed effect predictors: gender (L1), minority status (L1, L2, and L1xL2), and low income status (L1, L2, and L1xL2). The L1 effects of gender, minority status, and low income status had significant negative effects in all but one instance, but the most powerful effect on students’ probability of passing was the percentage of low income students in the school.

Author

• Carina M. McCormick, University of Nebraska - Lincoln