New Student-Poverty Measures Proposed for National Tests

Posted by on January 14, 2013

A better gauge

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is building a comprehensive new way to gauge socioeconomic status in order to measure how it affects academic achievement, reports Sarah Sparks in Education Week. For decades, the proxy for socioeconomic status for most federal education and child-health programs has been eligibility for subsidized meals under the National School Lunch Program. Yet food-aid eligibility gives an incomplete picture of students in poverty, gives no information about students who don’t qualify, and notoriously under-represents students as they get older and more self-conscious about applying for free or reduced-price lunch. The updated measure will assess broader resources and learning supports, such as family income, parental educational attainment, and parental employment. This year’s NAEP included new background questions, including how long a child has lived in the United States, how many family members live with a child, and how many adults in the home have a job. The student survey will still include questions about home possessions related to student achievement, such as access to the Internet and number of books in the home. The board is considering measuring other indicators that could highlight differences between students living at the same income level in different areas. Indicators of school and neighborhood supports also may be pulled from administrative data and the Census Bureau, such as neighborhood degree of concentrated poverty or linguistic isolation, average educational attainment, and employment levels.

Read more: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/12/12/14socioeconomic_ep.h32.html