Country, family, and school factors affecting student achievement: Evidence from international tests

We analyze how family, school and country factors affect the academic performance of students by adopting an ecological systems approach that encompasses attributes of the country, school, and students’ families. Based on student test scores from 41 countries, we have found that students in richer countries outperform those in poorer countries, controlling for family and school economic resources; resources at home (family SES, books, etc.) and at school (teachers, schoolmates, educational materials, etc.) mediate these effects. Students from countries with greater inequality such as greater household inequality, school level inequality, or schoolmate inequality of richer students from poorer students show lower test scores than other students. The negative effects of country’s income inequality suggest social costs to students excluded from society’s resources. Cultural values did not directly affect student achievement; instead they interacted with family characteristics’ links to student achievement. These results as a whole support an ecological approach to studying student achievement. Copyright © 2017 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.