Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) is often used to estimate the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) on academic achievement at different levels of an educational system. However, if a prior academic achievement measure is missing in a HLM model, biased estimates may occur on the effects of student SES and school SES. Phantom effects describe…

This rejoinder keeps the original focus on statistical computing pertaining to the correlation of student achievement between mathematics and science from the Trend in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Albeit the availability of student performance data in TIMSS and the emphasis of the inter-subject connection in the Next Generation Science…

Background/Context: Students, classrooms, teachers, and schools form hierarchical units of any schooling system that compete for, say, educational resources and sometimes blame one another for the failure to meet a certain societal goal. Little educational research exists that separates competing effects on schooling outcomes across these…

The United States invented a matrix sampling technique to impute five plausible scores of student performance in its National Assessment of Educational Progress. That approach was adopted by a Trend in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) for international comparison. In this paper, baseline data from TIMSS 1995 are analyzed at the seventh grade…

Using data from the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), we explored nine aspects of science engagement (science self-efficacy, science self-concept, enjoyment of science, general interest in learning science, instrumental motivation for science, future-oriented science motivation, general value of science, personal value of…

Using data from the 2011 (Chinese) Student Academic Achievement Evaluation, we examined whether within-school socioeconomic gaps in science achievement exist across science subjects, how consistent they are, and whether there are relationships between school average science achievement and within-school socioeconomic gaps in science achievement.…

Gender gaps in academic achievement have long captured the attention of educational researchers. Although studies from laboratory experiments have reported relatively consistent gender differences in cognitive skills over the decades, investigations done in schools have uncovered dramatic changes. In the United States, educational studies from the…

The purpose of the present study was to improve a multivariate multilevel model in the research literature which estimates the consistency in the rates of growth between mathematics and science achievement among students and schools. We introduced a new multivariate multilevel model via a latent variable approach. Data from the Longitudinal Study…

Used data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study for Canada to study the stability of within-school socioeconomic gaps in mathematics and science achievement. Discusses the success of schools and teachers in fighting socioeconomic gaps in mathematics and science achievement. (SLD)

In this study, the authors introduced a multivariate multilevel model to estimate the consistency among students and schools in the rates of growth between mathematics and science achievement during the entire middle and high school years with data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY). There was no evident consistency in the rates…

Used hierarchical linear models with data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth to model the growth of student science achievement in biology, physical science, and environmental science during middle and high school. Growth was quadratic across all areas, with rapid growth at the beginning of middle school and slow growth at the ending…