Overview of Efforts to Develop a Measure of Socioeconomic Status for National Large-Scale Surveys

• In Event: 54.032 - Measurement of Socioeconomic Status for American Education Surveys

Abstract

As part of a National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) review of the current proxy measure for reporting student-level Socioeconomic Status (eligibility for a free or reduced price lunch), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) convened a panel of SES experts. This panel published a white paper (https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/researchcenter/Socioeconomic_Factors.pdf) that included two key recommendations for improving the NAEP SES measure:

1) “Family income and other indicators of home possessions and resources, parental educational attainment, and parental occupational status should be considered components of a core SES measure, and should be the subject of immediate focus for NAEP reporting.”; and

2) “The validity of NSLP eligibility has been decreasing due to jurisdiction-wide eligibility and other factors, and that trend is likely to continue. Furthermore, there is concern over the quality of student reports, particularly regarding parental educational attainment (for 4th-graders) and occupational status (for all grades). Due to these data quality issues, along with burden considerations, attempts should be made to explore the possibility of linking to Census data on SES components.”

The presentation will provide an overview of NAEP’s past and current efforts to develop an improved measure of SES that focuses on the two key recommendations listed above.

Author

• William Ward, U.S. Department of Education