Children with higher educated parents perform better
The department of Educational Organization and Management from the Behavioral Science faculty is quite proud. They have recently finished an enormous job for OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), which includes a research report about the achievement levels of 15-year-old students from 42 countries worldwide.
The group was responsible for analyzing the test results of about 224,000 students from the 42 countries. Researchers Hans Luyten, Jaap Scheerens, Adrie Visscher, Ralf Maslowski, Bob Witziers, and Rien Steen began the arduous task of organizing the vast amount of data in December 2003, and in April their report rolled off the presses.
`It was heavy work' sighed co-authors Luyten and Visscher from their office in Cubicus. Before them lay the glossy final report School factors related to quality and equity, and next to it the supplementary Dutch analysis. Not a job they became rich from, for certain, but quite a prestigious assignment. `There are many colleagues who would have loved to have this research project', said Adrie Visscher, `therefore OECD could demand a lot for little money'.
Over three years, OECD collected information regarding the knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students. Their knowledge and in particular their capacity to apply it, was measured in mathematics, reading comprehension, and natural sciences. The data, gathered through testing tens of thousends of students in 30 OECD member countries as well as tens of thousends in a dozen non-OECD countries, was entered in the database of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The researchers were asked to analyze the 2000 data and find out what sort of influence educational systems and school characteristics have on student performance. Visscher: `For example, are student performances better at better managed schools? Or at a school system where students have attended a certain type of secondary school? And what influence does the socio-economic status of the parents have?'
`What is really nice,' adds Luyten, `is that our department had already done a great deal of this kind of research on the Netherlands. Now we had the chance to work with a larger data set and measurements from 42 countries. This research has never been done on such a large scale.'
One of the most important findings of the large-scale research is that the average vocational and educational levels of the students' parents have had a significant influence on school performance. Luyten: `Children from higher educated parents perform better. Also, if more children from such parents attend a school, the school performs better.' Visscher: `Of course we would have preferred to see that educational aspects have more influence on performance than socio-economic backgrounds, but that is just not the case.'
Remarkable, but not surprising to the researchers, is that good school management has minimal influence on performance. Visscher: `We often speak of the merits of management quality, good leadership, and the quality of teachers and administration, but that is not the biggest factor here.' Luyten: `Better management is no magic cure for student performance, but of course poor management can affect results negatively.'
Menno van Duuren
Trans. Mike Maier |
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