Browsing by Author "Turley, Ruth"

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    Between-year and within-year school mobility: different effects by race/ethnicity
    (2016-11-18) Min, Jie; Turley, Ruth
    This paper investigates the effects of school mobility on the academic achievement of four cohorts of students in the Houston Independent School District (HISD). In addition to distinguishing between within-year and between-year mobility, this study accounts for all schools students have attended, and it explores mobility effect differences by race/ethnicity. Using a multiple membership model (MMM), the findings suggest that within-year school mobility compromises students’ academic achievement more than between-year school mobility. Black students have the highest mobility rate both for between-year mobility and within-year mobility. In addition, although Asian-American students achieve higher reading and math scores on average than other groups, they experience a stronger negative impact from within-year school mobility than any other group. This finding suggests that Asian American is a diverse ethnic group in terms of socioeconomic status, a result contrary to the “model minority” image that many people believe. In one part of my study I found while some Asian-American students such as Chinese and South Koreans outperform white students in academic performance, those from Nepal, Bhutan, and a few other Asian regions fall behind other students. The conclusion contains implications for policy making and suggestions for future research.
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    Understanding Educational Achievement Gaps: A Summer Learning Perspective
    (2020-04-23) Min, Jie; Turley, Ruth
    Educational achievement gaps change by season. While students from different class backgrounds learn at similar rates when school is in session, over the summer class-based achievement gaps grow the fastest. The story is different for race-based achievement gaps. Black/white achievement gaps tend to widen more during the school year than over the summer. However, researchers have largely overlooked English learners (ELs), who are likely to be highly sensitive to summer break, a time when they are away from school and may not have enough exposure to an English language environment. In addition, summer learning scholars have long demonstrated that family socioeconomic status is the main driver of summer learning, but they fail to account for potential neighborhood effects on summer learning. Using administrative and assessment data from the Houston Independent School District (HISD), this dissertation addresses these gaps with three empirical studies. The first compares learning trajectories of three groups—Els whose home language is other than English, English proficient students whose home language is other than English, and English proficient students who speak English at home. I found reading learning gaps between English proficient students whose home language is other than English and the other two groups widen further during the academic year, but not during the summer. The second study assesses neighborhood effects on students’ reading learning rates, using 3-level piecewise linear models with neighborhood characteristics incorporated. Results indicate that concentrated disadvantage and violent crime have stronger effects on students’ reading outcomes during the academic year than in the summer. The third empirical piece examines the causal effects of a remedial summer program with two regression discontinuity designs. Results demonstrate that students who were at the margin of summer school eligibility did not benefit significantly from summer school. Taken together, these findings suggest that educational achievement gaps increase faster during the academic year than during the summer break.