Equity in Excellence: Promoting Persistence in Advanced Course Taking in Middle and High School

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

Taking advanced courses in middle and high school is associated with positive outcomes, including increased test scores and better odds of college acceptance and graduation, even after controlling for selection effects (Warne et al., 2015; Beard et al., 2019). Although many schools and districts are making an effort to close racial and income gaps in the taking of advanced courses, evidence of significant disparity still remains. Our previous work has examined various child and school factors that increase the odds that predominately low-income, students of color will (ever Yes/No) enroll in advanced courses in junior and high school. The current project seeks to expand those findings by investigating factors related to the accumulation of, or persistence in, advanced courses taken during a student’s secondary school tenure.
Data come from the Miami School Readiness Project (MSRP), a large scale, longitudinal, cohort sequential, university-community partnership that included around 90% of children who attended subsidized childcare or public school pre-K in Miami-Dade Florida during the years 2002-2006 (N= 33,825); 58.6% Latinx (N = 19,727), 34.8% Black (N = 11,694), 6% White/Other (N = 2,020), 0.6% Asian (N = 204), 83.1% (26,908) received free or reduced priced lunch, and 48.1% female (N = 16,182). Students were assessed for school readiness in preschool and followed longitudinally, using administrative data provided by the school district. The district in question offers multiple advanced course options, including ADV, a middle school advanced course, honors, AP, and DE. The majority of students in this sample (67.91%) enrolled in some sort of advanced course in middle or high school. School transcript data indicated student enrollment in a variety of advanced classes in middle school (grades 6-8) and high school (grades 9-12). Aggregates of these reports were computed totaling the number of advanced courses taken overall in a student’s tenure.
In line with previous research, a Kruskal-Wallis H test demonstrated that there was a statistically significant difference in the number of advanced courses taken by ethnicity (χ2 (3, N = 33,645) = 1410.74, p <.001) and poverty status (χ2 (2, N = 32,394) = 1541.87, p <.001). To examine the potential of school readiness and early school performance to promote the accumulation of advanced courses, spearman correlational analyses were conducted. Findings suggest that both academic and social school readiness skills at age 4 were moderately, positively related to the number of advanced courses taken (r’s = .18 to .37, p’s < .001). Both 5th grade standardized test scores (r = .41, p < .001) and 5th grade GPA were strongly associated with the number of courses taken (r = .65, p < .001). These results suggest that each of these factors is at least bivariately related to the accumulation of advanced courses. A negative binomial regression model will be run to provide a multivariate view on how each demographics, school readiness, and early educational outcomes interact to predict later advanced course taking and to highlight potential paths for promoting persistence.

Authors

• Courtney Ricciardi, George Mason University
  Presenting Author

• Adam Winsler, George Mason University
  Non-Presenting Author