IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ist/iujecs/v61y2020i0p41-64.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Socioeconomic Status and School Type as Predictors of Academic Achievement

Author

Listed:
  • H. Eren SUNA

    (Ministry of National Education, Ankara, Turkey)

  • Hande TANBERKAN

    (Ministry of National Education, Ankara, Turkey)

  • Bekir S. GÜR

    (Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Department of Media and Communication, Ankara, Turkey)

  • Matjaz PERC

    (University of Maribor, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Maribor, Slovenia)

  • Mahmut ÖZER

    (Ministry of National Education, Ankara, Turkey)

Abstract

We evaluated the effects of socioeconomic status and school type on academic achievement based on data from two million students over a 10 year period through three national transition systems in Turkey. Each of the three transition systems has its own national examination, and the data includes only students who took these exams. We used covariance analysis to compare the mean scores of public schools and private schools after controlling the effect of students’ socioeconomic levels. We found that students in private schools, who were socioeconomically stronger, had significantly higher academic achievement levels in language, mathematics, and science tests, and this finding was valid across all three transition systems. These effects were further exuberated when all the students were tracked by means of a national exam and placed into different high schools. It was found that the negative impact of one’s socioeconomic level on students’ scores reached its maximum value when all students were placed into high schools by means of a national exam. In all systems, the mean scores of private school students decreased significantly when the socioeconomic level was controlled. Our research has important implications for school tracking policies, specifically indicating that it would be better to omit or at least delay their deployment to post high-school education.

Suggested Citation

  • H. Eren SUNA & Hande TANBERKAN & Bekir S. GÜR & Matjaz PERC & Mahmut ÖZER, 2020. "Socioeconomic Status and School Type as Predictors of Academic Achievement," Journal of Economy Culture and Society, Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 61(0), pages 41-64, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ist:iujecs:v:61:y:2020:i:0:p:41-64
    DOI: 10.26650/JECS2020-0034
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/1121054
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/jecs/issue/55581/716748
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.26650/JECS2020-0034?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Keskiner, Hilal & Gür, Bekir S., 2023. "Questioning merit-based scholarships at nonprofit private universities: Lessons from Turkey," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    2. H. Eren Suna & Mahmut Ozer, 2024. "Medium- and long-term outcomes of early childhood education: experiences from Turkish large-scale assessments," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-15, December.
    3. Hayri Eren Suna & Mahmut Ozer & Sadri Sensoy & Bekir Siddik Gur & Selahattin Gelbal & Petek Aşkar, 2021. "Determinants of Academic Achievement in Turkey," Journal of Economy Culture and Society, Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 64(64), pages 143-162, December.
    4. Bölükbaş, Sema & Gür, Bekir S., 2020. "Tracking and inequality: The results from Turkey," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    5. Shang, Jing & Zeng, Mingbin & Zhang, Gupeng, 2022. "Investigating the mentorship effect on the academic success of young scientists: An empirical study of the 985 project universities of China," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    6. Mahmut Ozer & Matjaz Perc & Hayri Eren Suna, 2024. "Artificial Intelligence Bias and the Amplification of Inequalities in the Labor Market," Journal of Economy Culture and Society, Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 69(69), pages 159-168, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ist:iujecs:v:61:y:2020:i:0:p:41-64. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ertugrul YASAR (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifisttr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.