An International Study of Schools with High Proportions of Students from Single-Parent Families:

• In Event: 435 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 10. School Context: Composition, Disruptions and Discipline

Abstract

We address with the 2012 wave of the international PISA data, measuring performance and background of 15-years-old pupils in all OECD countries two questions: (1) Does the school’s composition of students from single-parent families affect classroom disruptions in school, indicated by truancy? (2) Do classroom disruptions mediate the negative effect of the school’s composition of students from single-parent families on students’ educational performance? Given our results, our answer is positive: (1) the concentration of single-parent families in school affects the condition of teaching and learning in schools. The negative school compositional effect on individual truancy cannot be fully explained by individuals’ membership in single-mother families. (2) The school-level measure of classroom disruption and truancy mediate some of the negative effect of the school’s concentration of students from single-parent families on individual students’ math performance. However, the school’s percentage of single-parent families remains significantly negative on individual performance. We also find that pupils living in a single-mother family do not perform significantly worse than other pupils, but only if we control for individual truancy.

Authors

• Jaap Dronkers, Maastricht University

• Gert-Jan Veerman, University of Amsterdam

• Suet-ling Pong, Pennsylvania State University