Is There a Trade-Off Between School Effectiveness and Equity?

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Eleven
  In Roundtable Session: Sociology of Education SIG Roundtables: Quantitative Approaches to Measuring Educational Outcomes and Equity (Table 6)

Abstract

Do schools vary in the extent to which they promote relatively equitable learning opportunities for students from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and does greater equity require a tradeoff with overall effectiveness? We investigate these questions with 9 years of administrative data for one state covering 4th and 5th grade students in all public elementary schools, and we employ a random intercept and random intercept multilevel models to simultaneously estimate overall contributions to learning and the difference for poor versus nonpoor students. Our results reveal meaningful variability in schools’ differential effectiveness (albeit less than for overall effectiveness), and we find evidence of a trade-off--more effective schools tend to be more unequal—but our estimates suggest the practical consequences are modest.

Authors

• Paul Y. Yoo, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author

• Paul Hanselman, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author