Factors that Affect Student Outcomes in U.S. Geography Education

Keywords: Educational assessment, educational equity, multilevel models, neighborhood effects, opportunity to learn.
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

The ideal of American public education as “a great equalizer” remains unrealized across large swaths of the United States. Young people in schools are at varying levels of educational advantage and disadvantage owing to wide gaps in learning opportunities and disparate access to high quality curriculum. Unequal educational achievement has also been linked to inequities affecting some students before they enter school due to socioeconomic circumstances, prejudice, and discriminatory social systems and structures. In this study, we begin to partition the various factors that account for inequality in student outcomes in the context of U.S. geography education. Using large-scale datasets provided by the National Center for Education Statistics within the U.S. Department of Education, we developed a two-level statistical model to analyze the extent that geography achievement in eighth grade varies systematically with contextual opportunity to learn (OTL) factors and the relative poverty level of neighborhoods around schools. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to account for data clustering, producing an achievement estimate for each predictor while controlling for the effects of all other predictors. Statistically significant OTL predictors included instructional exposure, curriculum organization, teaching experience, and the availability of computers in classrooms. Schools located in neighborhoods with higher income-to-poverty ratios outperformed schools in neighborhoods closer to the federal poverty threshold. Controlling for OTL and school neighborhood effects accounted for some of the geography achievement disadvantage associated with race and other student characteristics. Geographers can further explore these relationships with formal mediational models and educational programs based on equity-oriented frameworks.