Trends in Students' Higher-Order Thinking Skills by Race and Class

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research-in-Progress Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Educational Assessment: Policy, Models, and Practices (Table 9)

Abstract

Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS)--the ability to investigate issues, analyze evidence, and develop cohesive arguments (Leighton, 2011)--have become increasingly important. While students have demonstrated gains in the NAEP assessments over the past 50 years, far less is known about students' HOTS. Due to education policies like No Child Left Behind focused primarily on lower-order thinking skills, students' HOTS performance could have been hurt with additional potential for harm for racially and economically marginalized students. Using longitudinal item performance data from Massachusetts, I offer the first description of trends in HOTS performance across grades, time, or both and examine how performance varies across schools and districts with different concentrations of marginalized students.

Author

• John Wang, University of Virginia