The Opportunity Index: A School-Level, Data-Driven Tool for Assessing Neighborhood Factors associated with Student Outcomes

• In Event: 2-006 - Exploring Neighborhood and Community Effects via Secondary Data

Abstract

Many districts across the nation are implementing school choice enrollment policies in an attempt to give families greater access to high quality schools that meet their needs and match their interests. As one consequence of such policies, there is an increasing disconnection between schools themselves and the neighborhood-based resources of the students enrolled. That is, because students come from a wide variety of home neighborhoods, school-level leaders may be unware of the challenges and assets that students bring with them and thus may be unaware of the resources needed to best serve students. Because students do not come from schools' surrounding communities, it cannot be assumed that the student body's needs cannot be estimated or met by the resources surrounding the school. To better assess and gauge the needs of schools, we developed the Opportunity Index (OI). The OI is a place-based metric that captures inequities in academic achievement that arise from factors that are outside the control of schools. The purpose of the metric it to assess levels program needs and inform funding decisions. Based in prevailing sociological and psychological theories on how neighborhood context influences academic achievement, the OI was developed by integrating existing administrative data from the US Census, City of Boston, and Boston Public Schools to assess neighborhood-level and individual-level characteristics that might impact students' readiness to learn and ultimately academic achievement. Specifically, we used three years of state standardized test scores (2011-2012, 2012-2013, 2013-2014; both ELA and Math tests; for elementary, middle, and high school) along with the administrative city-wide data and census data, along with the Boston Area Research Initiative's library of neighborhood indicators to identify the most important factors, controlling for individual level characteristics (e.g., poverty, special education status).

In validating the OI, we found that neighborhoods varied by as much as 20 points in the expected standardized tests scores, with the academic attainment of other adults living in the neighborhood, neighborhood level SES, and public safety being the strongest and most consistent predictors across elementary, middle, and high school. In addition, we found that the individual and neighborhood predictors varied among elementary, middle and high school levels. This presentation will discuss the policy and research usages of the OI.

Authors

• Nancy E. Hill, Harvard University
  Presenting Author

• Daniel T. O'Brien, Northeastern University

• Mariah Contreras, Tufts University

• Eleanor Laurens, Boston Public Schools

• Colin Rose, Boston Public Schools