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The Matthew Effect in American Education
Abstract
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... The Matthew effect is phenomena where more resources end up being distributed to the universities with better results, which are usually located in larger urban centers, which results in the exclusion of universities in more remote regions. If funding is allocated in a more equative manner, then it could contribute to the development of the rural areas where students are situated [29]. This strategy of distributing resources gradually increases the strength of the country's strongest institutions, creates centralism, neglects remote regions of the country, and does not respond to specific people's needs [30]. ...
... This strategy of distributing resources gradually increases the strength of the country's strongest institutions, creates centralism, neglects remote regions of the country, and does not respond to specific people's needs [30]. This type of financing, backed by the elite, aims, in theory, to promote equal access, but it ends up favoring the wealthiest people (i.e., those who can already access the said universities without financial aid) [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. ...
... This is a 30% outstanding balance of student debt [24]. For some writers, this creates stress and the loss of credit reputation for borrowers [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]. Another relevant aspect is that IBR, compared with the English or Australian FCI, has low coverage, the eligibility criteria are restricted, and it has a high administrative complexity [24]. ...
Background: One of the challenges of countries is offering higher education (HE) to populations that are not able to access it. The problem lies in the fact that many citizens are unable to finance the costs of their education. Some countries have implemented a system of financing that is contingent on income, seeking to improve the number of students entering HE and to increase access to educational financing; however, this system requires commitments from higher-education institutions, the country, and companies; thus, this text analyzes the challenges and difficulties regarding the implementation of the current system. Methods: Based on comparative international experience, an analysis of the political and social factors that hinder the implementation of ICF was conducted. This article focuses on countries with average development indexes that are on the verge of applying such a model, as is the case with Colombia. Results: From the economic point of view of the public and private sectors, an ICF model is justified in countries with different economic and social conceptions, and reforms for the implementation of ICF are given by the vision of the political and economic system that each country might have. Conclusion: International experience concludes that, for the ICF model to be successful, it should focus on its beneficiaries; that is, it should accurately identify the aspects of the users of educational credit. Furthermore, politicians must show prodigious leadership skills to effectively explain the economic logic of political leaders.
... While SES, too, is a significant predictor of academic achievement, it is more difficult to change one's SES than fostering epistemic beliefs. The findings also suggest that when it comes to education, there seem to be grounds for the so-called 'Matthew effect' that goes by the adage 'the rich get richer and the poor get poorer' (Kerckhoff & Glennie, 1999;Rigney, 2010). High SES on school-level tends to go together with better academic achievement in students. ...
The role of epistemic beliefs in science (EBS) and socio-economic status (SES) on mathematics and science test results on both student- and school-level data was investigated via a secondary analysis of Estonian Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 survey data. The effective sample comprised 3991 students (52% girls, 48% boys) from 81 schools. Complementing bivariate correlation analysis, two-level regression models were computed where mathematics and science test scores were predicted from student- and school-level EBS as well as SES. Mathematics and science test scores had a medium-sized correlation with both EBS as well as SES on the student-level data. These correlations were larger on the school-level data. Multilevel analyses showed that both higher mathematics and science scores were predicted by male gender, higher student-level SES and EBS, and higher school-level SES. Higher school-level EBS significantly predicted better science test scores, but this was not the case with mathematics.
... Finding Matthew effects at the school-level is likely attributable to the way in which Mathematics curricula are designed through more explicit and direct instruction of concepts that build on one another (Clements et al., 2020) rather than the more student-directed learning practices that often characterize Reading instruction (Guthrie, Klauda, & Ho, 2013). If a school is populated mostly with lower-performing third graders in Mathematics, that would in turn influence curricular decisions in Mathematics (Kerckhoff & Glennie, 1999), forcing schools to focus on more basic concepts for longer, and therefore limiting the rate of improvement of that school as a whole. ...
Educational researchers continue to debate the relative contribution of individual and environmental factors to learning. Concomitant with the proliferation of longitudinal educational testing following students and schools over time, recent research has shown that nonlinear mixed effect models can be parameterized to directly estimate quantities meaningful to learning processes and are situated to address questions about whether learning is driven by the individuals or the context. However, three-level nonlinear models pose estimation challenges because the likelihood does not have a closed-form solution and integral approximations are intractable when there are multiple random effects at multiple levels of the model. Multivariate reparameterization to a structured latent curve model has been suggested as a method to circumvent similar issues in two-level models, but the approach has not yet to be extended to the context of three-level models. We extend the idea of structured latent curve models to accommodate data with a three-level hierarchy. We apply the model to six years of mathematics and reading scores from 6346 students in 68 schools to partition the variance of learning parameters into school- and student-level components. The results show that—compared to reading—learning in mathematics is more heavily influenced by school-level factors and that there is evidence for stronger Matthew effects (“the rich get richer”) in mathematics than in reading.
... Through a cumulative advantage lens, scholars have asserted that a favorable relative position or some amount of initial privilege-even if modest-may lead certain individuals to better access resources and become successful (DiPrete & Eirich, 2006;Rigney, 2010). Here, I use cumulative advantage to examine how privileges may compound in a tracking effect, similar to Kerckhoff and Glennie's (1999) evaluation of how students in particular positions came to be on course for certain career outcomes. I hypothesize that the advantages of social capital serve to underpin cumulative advantage, and that cumulative advantage may be a helpful explanatory tool to critique the structure of student engagement opportunities within colleges and universities. ...
Scholars have persistently recognized inequities in undergraduate college admissions and student engagement, especially with regard to specialized practices such as early admissions (i.e., early action and early decision, or EA/ED) and high-impact practices (HIPs). However, researchers have not yet considered whether the known social privileges of early admissions are associated with compounding privileges in terms of students’ participation in HIPs. Guided by a conceptual framework that places social capital and cumulative advantage in conversation with student engagement, this quantitative study explores whether the social privileges present among EA/ED students relate to greater participation in structures of college engagement, operationalized through the lens of HIPs. I use an analytic sample of 7657 undergraduate students who completed The Freshman Survey and the College Senior Survey (2013–2017), both administered by the Higher Education Research Institute, employing descriptive and multiple regression analyses to investigate the relationship between early admissions and later college engagement. Descriptive findings document many of the systemic privileges that EA/ED students hold and reveal that EA/ED students participate in certain types of HIPs more frequently than their regular admit peers. Further, regression results document several important predictors of HIP participation, including students’ social identities (e.g., sex, race, class), high school engagement and achievement, early admit status, and collegiate context, suggesting that access to college student engagement is not value neutral. Practical implications discuss the importance of questioning how—and for whom—specialized admissions and engagement programs serve.
... Adult enrollment may be a response to shifting relative wages or updated information regarding the labor market value of skills [15]. Social reproduction theory predicts that educational (dis)advantage will cumulate across the life course [16]. and that among adults without a college degree natal family resources will continue to enable educational upgrading [17]. ...
Undergraduate college-going is now undertaken well into adulthood, but knowledge about what leads individuals to enroll derives nearly entirely from the study of the “traditionally-aged”. I examine whether and how predictors of enrollment vary as individuals progress through the life-course using nationally representative data from the United States, following a cohort from ages 18–45. Measures of social background and academic preparation are only weakly predictive beyond age 24, while the effects of gender are largest after age 35. Marriage appears to be a barrier to enrollment among males and females, but only until age 25. Involuntary job loss spurs college-going most strongly among those aged 35 or older, and particularly among women. Among those over age 25, marital dissolution predicts enrollment positively among females but negatively among males.
... The idea of accumulation found a fruitful ground in education research, where it has been extensively applied to study the outcomes of early-life educational disadvantages (Kerckhoff, 1993;Kerckhoff & Glennie, 1999;Pallas, Natriello, & McDill, 1989). It was also adapted to the studies of adult education and LLL (Blossfeld et al., 2014;Bukodi, 2016;Elman & O'Rand, 2004;Kilpi-Jakonen et al., 2015), though shortages in appropriate data sources limit empirical longitudinal evidence. ...
Investments in lifelong learning may create unsatisfactory results, and this could potentially contribute to the reproduction of inequalities. We argue that the process is related to the accumulation of opportunities and barriers for participation in training, which can lock individuals in disadvantageous path-dependent trajectories. We take a longitudinal approach to analyse whether participation in training in older age is path-dependent, and whether this path dependency is related to institutional contexts. Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we trace individual training trajectories in the population aged 50+ in twelve European countries between 2010 and 2015 (27 370 respondents). Hierarchical Bayesian logit models serve to assess the probability of training during the sixth wave, with a lagged dependent variable as a predictor. Results suggest that training participation is path-dependent and participation in training is limited for people who have not trained previously. It is also related to macrostructural context: path dependency is lower in countries with stronger knowledge economies, stronger emphasis on education, and a proactive ageing climate. Recognising path dependency can help to improve access to training and design policies that address problems of cohesion, active ageing and adult learning.
... Skill grouping may promote unequal achievement gains as early as in primary education (Condron 2008). Ability-based tracking in secondary schooling may foster 'institutional' Matthew effects by exerting additional cumulative effects on learning, thus leading to increasing dispersion in achievement (Hanushek and Woessmann 2006;Kerckhoff and Glennie 1999). To the degree that prior achievement is associated with SES, ability-based tracking may contribute to SES gaps in achievement widening further over secondary schooling. ...
When in children's lives do gaps by family socioeconomic status (SES) in cognitive skills emerge, how large are they before children enter school, and how do they develop over schooling? We study the evolution of achievement gaps by parental education from birth to adolescence in Germany. We exploit data from fifty-seven tests taken from the age of seven months to sixteen years by the National Educational Panel Study. Because Germany has one of the most stratified education systems in the Western World, we hypothesized that achievement gaps will grow particularly during tracked secondary schooling. However, our findings show that SES gaps emerge and expand long before children enter school and then remain stable throughout their school careers. Because gaps stop growing, we tentatively conclude that schooling decreases inequality in learning by family SES.
This article investigates whether attending a sequence of racially diverse schools predicts science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) college outcomes. Such a relationship is important because of the increasingly diverse population of school‐aged children who are likely to attend racially segregated K‐12 schools and colleges, the benefits for individuals and society of STEM college graduates, and the projected shortage of people trained for future STEM workforce demands. We use a unique panel data set ( N = 14,980) of the University of North Carolina graduates. Our main analytical approach is multilevel modeling to examine the relationship between attending a sequence of racially diverse educational institutions and the odds of declaring and/or graduating with a STEM major. We find that students who attended a diverse sequence of schools are more likely to declare and graduate with STEM majors than those who did not. Framing our results with theories of cumulative advantage and intergroup contact theories, we offer science education policy reform recommendations.
This paper explores participation trends in interventions that promote self‐evaluation exercises on the effective use of digital technologies in schools. We use a unique dataset consisting of 83,185 respondents from 924 Spanish schools that used SELFIE, a tool based on self‐reflection questionnaires that capture different dimensions of school's digital capacity. We benefit from a natural experiment situation caused by the parallel use of SELFIE by two groups of schools. The first group was externally selected as part of a representative sample of Spanish schools. Conversely, the second group voluntarily decided to use SELFIE as a diagnostic tool for a subsequent self‐evaluation exercise. Moreover, a subset of schools were located in regions where authorities embedded SELFIE in broader digitalisation programmes. By comparing these groups, it is shown that schools that decide to participate in SELFIE voluntarily are those with a lower initial digitalisation level. It is also found that the promotion of the use of SELFIE as part of public interventions can increase participation but mainly attracts digitally advanced schools. In conclusion, policy interventions aiming to develop the digital capacity of schools need to plan how to reach those schools that need it more in order to be more equitable.
Practitioner notes
What is already known about this topic
Research has shown the existence of a Matthew effect in the usage of digital technologies in education.
The promotion of schools self‐evaluation exercises on digital education is a common policy intervention that is growing in importance.
There is a surprising lack of attention to the inequitable effects that programmes aiming to incorporate technologies in educational institutions may generate.
What this paper adds
This paper investigates the self‐selection trends and (un)equity effects of SELFIE, an EU programme designed to prompt schools' self‐evaluations of digital capacity.
When schools decide autonomously, schools with low digital capacity levels tend to participate in SELFIE more.
Incorporation of SELFIE into broader public programmes enlarges participation in SELFIE.
Incorporation of SELFIE into broader public programmes over‐attracts digitally advanced schools.
Implications for practice and/or policy
Public policies promoting self‐evaluation exercises on school digital capacity in schools might be a good way for upscaling these exercises.
However, these policies should be carefully designed to reduce inequalities and reach these schools that need digitalisation more.
We ask whether patterns of racial ethnic and socioeconomic stratification in educational attainment are amplified or attenuated when we take a longer view of educational careers. We propose a model of staged advantage to understand how educational inequalities evolve over the life course. Distinct from cumulative advantage, staged advantage asserts that inequalities in education ebb and flow over the life course as the population at risk of making each educational transition changes along with the constraints they confront in seeking more education. Results based on data from the 2014 follow up of the sophomore cohort of High School and Beyond offer partial support for our hypotheses. The educational attainment process was far from over for our respondents as they aged through their 30s and 40s: More than 6 of 10 continued their formal training during this period, and 4 of 10 earned an additional credential. Patterns of educational stratification at midlife became more pronounced in some ways as women pulled further ahead of men in their educational attainments and parental education (but not income), and high school academic achievement continued to shape educational trajectories at the bachelor’s degree level and beyond. However, African Americans gained on whites during this life phase through continued formal (largely academic) training and slightly greater conditional probabilities of graduate or professional degree attainment; social background fails to predict earning an associate’s degree. These results, showing educational changes and transitions far into adulthood, have implications for our understanding of the complex role of education in stratification processes.
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