Markus Broer Yifan Bai Socioeconomic Inequality And .

IEA Research for EducationA Series of In-depth Analyses Based on Data of the InternationalAssociation for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)Markus BroerYifan BaiFrank FonsecaSocioeconomicInequality andEducationalOutcomesEvidence from Twenty Years of TIMSS

IEA Research for EducationA Series of In-depth Analyses Based on Dataof the International Association for the Evaluationof Educational Achievement (IEA)Volume 5Series EditorsSeamus Hegarty, University of Warwick, UK, and Chair of IEA Publicationsand Editorial CommitteeLeslie Rutkowski, Indiana University, USAEditorial BoardJohn Ainley, Australian Council for Educational Research, AustraliaKadriye Ercikan, University of British Columbia, CanadaEckhard Klieme, German Institute for International Educational Research(DIPF), GermanyRainer Lehmann, Humboldt University of Berlin, GermanyFou-Lai Lin, National Taiwan Normal University, Chinese TaipeiMarlaine Lockheed, Princeton University, USASarah Maughan, AlphaPlus Consultancy, UKCarina Omoeva, FHI 360, USAElena Papanastasiou, University of Nicosia, CyprusValena White Plisko, Independent Consultant, USAJonathan Plucker, John Hopkins University, USAFernando Reimers, Harvard Graduate School of Education, USADavid Rutkowski, Indiana University, USAJouni Välijärvi, University of Jyväskylä, FinlandHans Wagemaker, Senior Advisor to IEA, New Zealand

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)is an independent nongovernmental nonprofit cooperative of national researchinstitutions and governmental research agencies that originated in Hamburg,Germany, in 1958. For over 60 years, IEA has developed and conductedhigh-quality, large-scale comparative studies in education to support countries’efforts to engage in national strategies for educational monitoring and improvement.IEA continues to promote capacity building and knowledge sharing to foster innovationand quality in education, proudly uniting more than 60 member institutions, withstudies conducted in more than 100 countries worldwide.IEA’s comprehensive data provide an unparalleled longitudinal resource forresearchers, and this series of in-depth thematic reports can be used to shed lighton critical questions concerning educational policies and educational research.The goal is to encourage international dialogue focusing on policy matters andtechnical evaluation procedures. The resulting debate integrates powerfulconceptual frameworks, comprehensive datasets and rigorous analysis, thusenhancing understanding of diverse education systems worldwide.More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14293

Markus Broer Yifan Bai Frank FonsecaSocioeconomic Inequalityand Educational OutcomesEvidence from Twenty Years of TIMSS

Markus BroerAmerican Institutes for ResearchWashington, DC, USAYifan BaiAmerican Institutes for ResearchWashington, DC, USAFrank FonsecaAmerican Institutes for ResearchWashington, DC, USAISSN 2366-1631ISSN 2366-164X (electronic)IEA Research for EducationISBN 978-3-030-11990-4ISBN 978-3-030-11991-1 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11991-1 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) 2019. This book is anopen access publication.Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), whichpermits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium orformat, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to theCreative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons license,unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s CreativeCommons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitteduse, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.This work is subject to copyright. All commercial rights are reserved by the author(s), whether the wholeor part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission orinformation storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilarmethodology now known or hereafter developed. Regarding these commercial rights a non-exclusivelicense has been granted to the publisher.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publicationdoes not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevantprotective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this bookare believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or theeditors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errorsor omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claimsin published maps and institutional affiliations.This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

ForewordIEA’s mission is to enhance knowledge about education systems worldwide and toprovide high-quality data that will support education reform and lead to betterteaching and learning in schools. In pursuit of this aim, it conducts, and reports on,major studies of student achievement in literacy, mathematics, science, citizenship,and digital literacy. IEA studies, most notably TIMSS, PIRLS, ICCS, and ICILS,have set the benchmark for international comparative studies in education.These well-established studies have generated vast datasets encompassingstudent achievement, disaggregated in a variety of ways, along with a wealth ofcontextual information which contains considerable explanatory power. The numerousreports that have emerged from them represent an invaluable contribution to thecorpus of educational research.Nevertheless, IEA’s goal of supporting education reform needs something more:deep understanding of education systems and the many factors that bear on studentlearning advances through in-depth analysis of the global datasets. IEA has longchampioned such analyses and facilitates scholars and policymakers in conductingsecondary analysis of the datasets. So IEA provides software such as the InternationalDatabase Analyzer to encourage the analysis of their datasets, support numerouspublications, including a peer-reviewed journal – Large-Scale Assessment in Education– dedicated to the science of large-scale assessment and publishing articles thatdraw on large-scale assessment databases; and organize a biennial internationalresearch conference to nurture exchanges between researchers working withIEA data.The IEA Research for Education series represents a further effort by IEA tocapitalize on these unique datasets, so as to provide powerful information forpolicymakers and researchers. Each report focuses on a specific topic and isproduced by a dedicated team of leading scholars on the theme in question. Teamsare selected on the basis of an open call for tenders; there are two such calls a year.Tenders are subject to a thorough review process, as are the reports produced. (Fulldetails are available on the IEA website.)v

viForewordThis fifth volume in the series is concerned with socioeconomic inequality andeducational outcomes. Socioeconomic status is a key variable in social scienceresearch. It is especially important to the understanding of educational inequalityand how best to address it. There is a substantial literature on the links betweenstudents’ educational achievement and their family background. Despite this,challenges in measuring socioeconomic status and identifying its impact persist.This book draws on data collected over 20 years in the IEA Trends inInternational Maths and Science Study (TIMSS) and scrutinizes studentachievement levels in relation to their socioeconomic status. Besides achievementdata, TIMSS has been collecting background information from students, teachers,and school principals. Using a modified version of the TIMSS home educationalresources index, the authors have identified tentative patterns in the changes overtime. Specifically, they have established which countries have seen greatereducational inequality attributable to family background and which have seen areduction. They also identify which countries have managed to increase theacademic performance of disadvantaged students over the period and those whichhave not.There are no easy answers to the challenges posed by the educationalunderachievement of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. It remains,however, one of the most significant issues facing societies and their educationsystems. While family background is a critical variable, the authors properly pointout that macro-level factors such as gross national wealth per person, totalexpenditure on education, and degree of centralization of the education system allplay a part. What this book does offer is a data-driven focus on the effects ofsocioeconomic status on educational outcomes and a methodology for deepernational investigation across the many cycles of TIMSS. Both researchers andpolicymakers will find it suggestive in terms of exploring national contexts moreprecisely and devising policy actions to ameliorate educational underachievement.Future publications in the series will examine trends to evaluate the success ofcountries in strengthening teacher quality, and reducing educational inequality, andsystematically investigate differences in use, perceptions, and capabilities in usingcomputer technologies by student gender.Seamus HegartyLeslie RutkowskiSeries editors