The shape of educational inequality
release_5weaqes2evg5xg2qzolt5kajli
by
Christopher L Quarles, Ceren Budak, Paul J. Resnick
2020 Volume 6, Issue 29, eaaz5954
Abstract
Hundreds of thousands of students drop out of school each year in the United States, despite billions of dollars of funding and myriad educational reforms. Existing research tends to look at the effect of easily measurable student characteristics. However, a vast number of harder-to-measure student traits, skills, and resources affect educational success. We present a conceptual framework for the cumulative effect of all factors, which we call student capital. We develop a method for estimating student capital in groups of students and find that student capital is distributed exponentially in each of 140 cohorts of community college students. Students' ability to be successful does not behave like standard tests of intelligence. Instead, it acts like a limited resource, distributed unequally. The results suggest that rather than removing barriers related to easily measured characteristics, interventions should be focused on building up the skills and resources needed to be successful in school.
In application/xml+jats
format
Archived Files and Locations
application/pdf 885.7 kB
file_titbnqfokvccjfhmha4gjiwstq
|
advances.sciencemag.org (publisher) web.archive.org (webarchive) |
Open Access Publication
In DOAJ
In ISSN ROAD
In Keepers Registry
ISSN-L:
2375-2548
access all versions, variants, and formats of this works (eg, pre-prints)
Crossref Metadata (via API)
Worldcat
SHERPA/RoMEO (journal policies)
wikidata.org
CORE.ac.uk
Semantic Scholar
Google Scholar