Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis

Low-achieving, low-income students are typically tracked into dead-end math courses in high school. In this article, the authors evaluate the success of “transition” math courses in California and New York, which are designed to bridge the gap between elementary and college-preparatory mathematics and to provide access to more challenging and meaningful mathematics for students who enter high school with poor skills. The authors hypothesize that the transition courses—Math A in California and Stretch Regents and UCSMP Math in New York—allow students to keep pace with those who enter college-preparatory courses by covering rigorous mathematical content using a range of cognitive strategies. Data from 882 students in 48 math classes are analyzed using a three-level hierarchical linear model. The results show that growth in student achievement is significantly lower in general-track classes than in college-preparatory classes. Achievement in transition classes falls in between: not significantly lower than in college-preparatory classes, but not significantly greater than in general-track classes. More rigorous content coverage accounts for much of the achievement advantage of college-preparatory classes. The transition classes are judged a partial success in meeting their goal of upgrading the quality of mathematics instruction for low-achieving, low-income youth.

This article examines the deteriorating status of the humanities and social sciences versus mathematics and the sciences in the curriculum of Israeli high schools. We examine this tendency by conducting a multi-level analysis of the effect of school and individual characteristics on inequality in curriculum specialization on a sample of academic-track 12th-graders in 1989. The main findings are (a) more able students, males, and members of the privileged Jewish ethnic group in Israel tend to specialize in mathematics and the sciences, and (b) students’ characteristics are the major determinant of course-taking in mathematics and the sciences, whereas school policy is central regarding the humanities and social sciences. The article discusses social implications of the findings.

The distributional pattern of federal funding allocated through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act’s Title I program was examined for all public schools in New York State. Although Title I is a major vehicle for serving the needs of poor children and redressing educational inequity, the present findings suggest that poorer school districts may be ill-served by the present law in several ways: (1) The federal Title I program is widely distributed across New York State to 98% of school districts and to nearly 80% of all public schools; (2) regardless of the poverty rate for any given school district (including the most affluent districts), a clear majority of schools receive Title 1 funding; (3) some of the poorest districts may be unable to use Title I to serve many of their educationally disadvantaged children when an individual school’s poverty rate falls below the intradistrict average. Implications for children in poverty are discussed with reference to the most recent reauthorization of Title I (Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994).

Although rural communities have pressing needs for educated youth, rural schools are criticized for training students with urban-oriented labor skills that facilitate rural-to-urban migration. Some analysts see such schooling contributing to the rural community’s decline. Educators and policymakers concerned about rural areas need to know what kind of school programs help retain educated youth in rural areas. Research on the comparative effectiveness of different curriculum programs in retaining youth in the community can inform the program development for rural schools.

This report presents a study that addressed the issue with data from a national longitudinal study, the High School and Beyond (HS&B) of the National Center for Education Statistics. With two-level hierarchical logit modeling that decomposed the variance into school- and individuallevels components, we examined the post-school outmigration pattern in connection with students’ coursework (at the individual level) and curriculum program enrollment (at the school level). We focused on the effects on outmigration of the academic program and the vocational program measured at the two levels, adjusting for the effects of the local labor market condition and student sociodemographic background and test scores. We also introduced interaction terms to determine the specific effects of curriculum on rural school average outmigration.

The results revealed that, controlling for the effects of local labor market and student background and academic achievement, outmigration was positively related to schools’ emphasis on academic programs and students’ high credits in the academic curriculum. To clarify the possible confounding relationship between outmigration and college attendance, we further analyzed data of youth that had not gone to college four years after high school. Essentially, the same pattern was found among this subsample of noncollege-goers. Implications for curriculum development were suggested based on the results and other perspectives regarding curriculum reform.