Abstract
Although students at more selective schools generally demonstrate greater academic performance, it is unclear whether the gains from attending an elite postsecondary institution are due to the quality of educational services provided, or merely from peer and/or selection effects. Employing data drawn from the US-TEDS study, we assess the relationship between college selectivity and the mathematics learning of future teachers controlling for previous SAT scores using two different models. In an institution-level analysis, gains in student knowledge are measured by the difference between standardized SAT scores and standardized mathematical content knowledge (MCK) scores. In a multi-level model institutional and student-level data are used to examine the effects of selectivity on MCK scores, including measures of course-taking and prior achievement. In both analyses we find that college selectivity has little relationship with added mathematical knowledge.
This chapter was previously published, as Schmidt, William, Nathan Burroughs, Leland Cogan, and Richard Houang. (2011) “Are College Rankings An Indicator of Quality Education?” Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Roundtable. Vol. 2011, no. 3. http://forumonpublicpolicy.com/vol2011no3/archive/schmidt.pdf. The article is being re-printed with the permission of the Forum on Public Policy, Oxford Round Table.
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- 1.
Calculated from data presented in Dell (2011).
- 2.
The use of the term “value added” is not to be confused with the quite different “value-added models” that are in widespread use as measures of school and teacher quality in U.S. K-12 education.
- 3.
Some institutions reported only ACT scores, which were transformed into equivalent SAT scores.
- 4.
One possibility is that those entering teacher preparation programs in less competitive schools have higher SAT scores relative to their institution, while those preparing to become teachers at competitive schools have lower relative SAT scores.
- 5.
Part of this increase may be due to differing sample populations. The SAT is normed on the U.S. population, while the MCK is normed internationally. As the U.S. average on the MCK is slightly higher than the average SAT math score, part of the difference in performance between the two exams is based on that higher average. This likely contributes only to a modest proportion of the overall score gain, however.
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Schmidt, W., Burroughs, N., Cogan, L., Houang, R. (2014). Are College Rankings an Indicator of Quality Education? Comparing Barron’s and TEDS-M. In: Blömeke, S., Hsieh, FJ., Kaiser, G., Schmidt, W. (eds) International Perspectives on Teacher Knowledge, Beliefs and Opportunities to Learn. Advances in Mathematics Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6437-8_23
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