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Citation:

Catsambis, S., & Breveridge, A. A. (2001). Neighborhood and school influences on the family life and mathematics performance of eighth-grade students (CRESPAR Report No. 54). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University. http://www.csos.jhu.edu/crespar/reports.htm

Annotation:
This study seeks to determine whether neighborhoods and schools make a difference in parental practices in 8th gradersÕ schooling and examine the ways parent practices, neighborhoods, and schools influence studentsÕ 8th grade achievement. Authors conclude that neighborhoods may influence studentsÕ academic achievement by depressing parental practice associated with high math achievement, but that parents may be able to overcome neighborhood disadvantages through communication, monitoring, and providing learning opportunities for their children. Parental practices of "educational expectationsÓ and "out-of-school learning opportunitiesÓ had the strongest positive association with math achievement. Researchers suggest the following from their findings: neighborhood and school characteristics may influence students and their mathematics achievement; lower levels of math achievement are associated with school poverty and neighborhood disadvantage; neighborhoods affect parentsÕ abilities to help children succeed in school and; poverty and absenteeism associate with low math achievement. The team combined student data from National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88) with U.S. Census data and used zip codes to define neighborhoods, then they derived social characteristics of the neighborhoods from census data. They examined seven indicators of parental involvement and determined levels of achievement from 8th grade math test scores. They controlled for social background, school behavior, neighborhood characteristics, and school characteristics including Òacademic pressÓ (academic determination and the morale of staff and students). The researchersÕ concede that their use of zip codes and census data to identify neighborhood characteristics may be reliable in urban settings but not suburban settings. The findings may help educators understand some ways the contexts of a childÕs life frames achievement.