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Study: Students with bad home lives score lower on tests
From the Press Release at Education Next,:
Carrell and Hoekstra find that adding one troubled student to a classroom of 20 students decreases student reading and math test scores by more than two-thirds of a percentile point and increases misbehavior among other students in the classroom by 16 percent.
"The Domino Effect" is available in pdf format
The researchers acknowledge that the precision of the numbers may seem suspicious but they explain how they did it.
By Christopher Curry
In the classroom, one "bad apple" can spoil or, at least, hinder the whole bunch when it comes to academic performance and disciplinary problems.
So says a study that relied on confidential student record data from the Alachua County School District.
The study also concluded that children from troubled households, defined as those with incidents of domestic violence, perform worse on standardized tests and have more behavioral problems in school.
Researchers Scott Carrell, an associate professor of economics at the University of California-Davis, and Mark Hoekstra, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote up their conclusions in the latest issue of Education Next a publication of the Stanford University Hoover Institution.
Carrell has Alachua County ties.
He received two master's degrees and a doctorate from the University of Florida.
The study used disciplinary and academic records from 1995 to '96 through 2002-03 for a sampling of students in grades three to five. Those records were then cross-referenced to see if any domestic violence records matched the student's address or the name of a student's parent.
Boys exposed to domestic violence scored in the 37th percentile on standardized tests, compared to the 52nd percentile for other boys. They were 18 percent more likely to get in trouble.
The results were not as pronounced for girls exposed to domestic violence at home. They scored in the 41st percentile on standardized tests, compared to the 55th percentile for other girls. They were 8 percent more likely to get in trouble at school.
These students from troubled homes also had a negative impact on their classmates, the study concluded. The addition of one troubled student to a classroom of 20 students lowered the scoring average on standardized tests and led to increased disciplinary problems among other students, particularly boys.
The Alachua County School District has applied for grant money and also plans to use Title I federal stimulus money to increase psychological and counseling services for at-risk students from troubled and low-income households.
— Christopher Curry
Gainesville News
2009-05-18
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20090518/ARTICLES/905181001/1002/NEWS01?Title=Study-Students-with-bad-home-lives-score-lower-on-tests
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