11. Educational Improvement and Quality Assurance
Paper
AP or IB? Urban/Rural Differences in Access to Advanced Coursework, High School Achievement, and Postsecondary Outcomes
Dong Wook Jeong1, Thomas F. Luschei2
1Seoul National University, Korea, Republic of (South Korea); 2Claremont Graduate University, United States of America
Presenting Author: Jeong, Dong Wook;
Luschei, Thomas F.
Educators, education researchers, and policymakers have increasingly pointed to the importance of advanced coursework to prepare high school students to enter and succeed in college. Research has found ample evidence of the importance of such coursework, which can include Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses. The positive advantages of taking such coursework appears to accrue while students are in high school and to increase their likelihood of entering and succeeding in postsecondary education (Coca et al, 2012; Conger et al., 2021; Perna et al., 2015).
Unfortunately, access to advanced coursework is not uniform across students or schools in the United States. Studies of access to IB coursework have found that despite growing efforts by the International Baccalaureate Organization to expand and “democratize” IB course offerings, lower-income and ethnic minority students do not have equal access to them (Perna et al., 2015). There is also evidence that both IB and AP coursework are less available to students in remote and rural schools, relative to students in cities and suburban areas (Gagnon & Mattingly, 2016; Thier & Beach, 2021). However, because IB is offered on a much smaller scale than AP, IB courses are much less common than AP courses in rural schools (Thier & Beach, 2021). Assuming that IB and AP programs provide a clear advantage over non-advanced coursework, this pattern has negative implications for the educational achievement and attainment of students in rural areas, as well as for rural development (Saw & Agger, 2021).
Despite the clear advantages of advanced coursework for students’ high school and postsecondary success, it is not clear whether all advanced coursework has the same benefit for students. Many studies that examine the link between advanced course-taking and student success combine AP and IB into one group, as if they offered the same educational experience and rigor (e.g., Long et al., 2012). In fact, there are important differences between AP and IB in their missions, structures, and potential utility for high school students (Saavedra, 2014; Thier & Beach, 2021). For example, whereas AP offers discrete, subject-based courses, IB provides a comprehensive program of study leading to an internationally recognized high school diploma. Further, IB’s emphasis on global understanding may offer an additional benefit to students in rural areas, who have less opportunity to develop “international mindedness” than their peers in large cities (Thier & Beach, 2021). Unfortunately, very few studies have directly compared the relative impact of AP and IB coursework on students’ high school and postsecondary success.
Our objective is to examine differential access to and impact of advanced coursework—specifically IB and AP courses—for high school students across communities of different sizes (urban, suburban, town, and rural) in the United States. Although AP and IB are commonly grouped together under the category of “advanced coursework,” we examine differences between these two curricular and programmatic approaches in terms of availability, course-taking, and impact on high school and post-secondary outcomes. Using data from the US National Center for Education Statistics’ High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS 2009), which allow us to generate nationally representative results, we examine the following research questions:
- Does access to AP and IB courses vary across schools in communities of different sizes (urban, suburban, rural, towns) in the United States?
- How do students in these schools differ in terms of whether and which advanced courses they take?
- Do students in these schools differ in terms of the relative impact of AP and IB courses on their high school achievement and post-secondary outcomes?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedFor our analysis, we draw on the rich, nationally representative HSLS:09 data, administered by the NCES. NCES also conducted HSLS follow-up studies in 2012, 2013, and 2016. We also use data from the HSLS high school and postsecondary transcript studies, generated in 2013 and 2017 respectively. Together, these data allow us to examine and compare AP and IB courses in terms of high school- and college-level outcomes.
To conduct our analysis, we must contend with the fact that students are not randomly assigned to AP or IB programs. In fact, many schools have entry requirements, such as a minimum GPA or test score performance, for students to enroll in these courses in the first place (Saavedra, 2014). This suggests the possibility of pre-existing differences between program participants and non-participants, leading to sample selection bias (Dickson et al., 2018). Further, neither AP nor IB programs are evenly distributed across urban and non-urban schools, nor do these programs uniformly enroll students within schools.
We employ several strategies to mitigate the potential for sample selection bias in our estimates. First, we first limit our analytic sample to 12th graders in 2013 who ever participated in either AP or IB programs only. This approach allows us to: (1) directly compare the relative effectiveness of each of these programs and (2) reduce or eliminate the first type of bias, between program participants and non-participants. Second, we use a differences-in-differences (DID) approach to account for between-school bias. Using the DID approach, we subtract differences in the outcomes of AP students between urban and non-urban areas from differences in the outcomes of IB students between the two areas. The underlying idea is to cancel out any pre-existing differences in characteristics, whether observed or unobserved, of IB and AP students and programs between urban and non-urban schools. Last, we introduce propensity score matching to adjust for any remaining pre-existing differences between IB and AP participants based on the observed characteristics of individuals. We then replicate a differences-in-differences estimation for matched samples of IB and AP students between urban and rural schools. To test the robustness of our results, we employ other propensity score methods including propensity score stratification and inverse probability weighting.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFor Research Question 1, we find that although IB and AP courses are both less likely to be offered in towns and rural areas relative to cities, the differences between towns/rural areas and cities are much greater in terms of IB availability. However, when schools do offer IB courses, students are more likely to take them, compared to AP students.
The results of Research Question 2 adds evidence to these conclusions. When examining course-taking patterns of students in schools that offer both IB and AP courses, we find that students take on average more IB units. Finally, our findings regarding the relative impact of IB and AP courses on students’ high school and postsecondary outcomes (Research Question 3), we find that whereas IB students in towns have a small advantage in high school-level outcomes (primarily in terms of GPA in IB/AP courses), IB holds a consistent advantage in terms of postsecondary outcomes for students in towns and rural areas. These include enrollment in a four-year college (towns and rural areas), credits earned in the first year of college (rural areas), first-year GPA (rural areas), total credits (rural areas), and accumulated GPA (rural areas). However, our analysis finds systematic differences between IB and AP students that are driven primarily by school-level supply constraints. After adjusting for these differences by limiting our sample and applying propensity score matching, we continue to find a relative IB advantage for students in towns and rural areas in terms of IB/AP GPA (towns), four-year college enrollment (rural areas) and accumulated GPA (towns). Our sensitivity analysis using propensity score stratification and inverse probability weighting finds similar results, suggesting that our key findings related to IB advantages for town and rural students are robust across different specifications for 12th grade GPA, four-year college enrollment, and accumulated college GPA.
ReferencesCoca, V., Johnson, D., Kelley-Kemple, T., Roderick, M., Moeller, E., Williams, N., & Moragne, K. (2012). Working to my potential: The postsecondary experiences of CPS students in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme. Chicago, IL: Consortium on Chicago School Research.
Conger, D., Kennedy, A. I., Long, M. C., & McGhee, R. (2021). The effect of Advanced Placement science on students’ skills, confidence, and stress. Journal of Human Resources, 56(1), 93-124.
Dickson, Anisah, Laura B. Perry, and Susan Ledger. "Impacts of International Baccalaureate programmes on teaching and learning: A review of the literature." Journal of Research in International Education 17, no. 3 (2018): 240-261.
Gagnon, D. J., & Mattingly, M. J. (2016). Advanced placement and rural schools: Access, success, and exploring alternatives. Journal of Advanced Academics, 27(4), 266-284.
Long, M. C., Conger, D., & Iatarola, P. (2012). Effects of high school course-taking on secondary and postsecondary success. American Educational Research Journal, 49(2), 285-322.
Perna, L. W., May, H., Yee, A., Ransom, T., Rodriguez, A., & Fester, R. (2015). Unequal access to rigorous high school curricula: An exploration of the opportunity to benefit from the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP). Educational Policy, 29(2), 402-425.
Saavedra, A. (2014). The Academic Impact of Enrollment in International Baccalaureate Diploma Programs: A Case Study of Chicago Public Schools. Teachers College Record, 116(4).
Saw, G. K., & Agger, C. A. (2021). STEM pathways of rural and small-town students: Opportunities to learn, aspirations, preparation, and college enrollment. Educational Researcher, 50(9), 595-606.
Thier, M., & Beach, P. T. (2021). Still where, not if, you’re poor: International Baccalaureate opportunities to learn international-mindedness and proximity to US cities. Journal of Advanced Academics, 32(2), 178-206.
11. Educational Improvement and Quality Assurance
Paper
Agency of Schoolchildren and Their Particiation in Extracurricular Activities
Mikhail Goshin, Pavel Sorokin, Sergey Kosaretsky
Higher School of Economics, Russian Federation
Presenting Author: Goshin, Mikhail
The rapidly changing social reality of contemporary world brings new challenges to an individual (including children) in everyday life. One of the most important issues is the growing demand for agency, that is, the ability to make decisions and be proactive in various contexts and spheres of public and personal life without external control or support typical for the institutional systems (including educational systems). The concept is "agency" generally implies the ability of a person to proactively influence the environment, social structures, including the creation of new forms of interaction in various spheres of public life (Sorokin, Zykova, 2021). Agency can be considered as an umbrella concept combining such constructs as subjectivity, autonomy, independence, initiative, self-determination, self-regulation, proactive behavior, social impact, cooperation, etc. [Udehn, 2002; Sorokin, Frumin, 2022; Cavazzoni et al., 2021].
The field of education has a special role in the formation and development of these personal qualities and behavioral models. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in the framework of the project "The Future of Education and Skills 2030" emphasizes the importance of forming agency among students, understood as a proactive position in relation to their educational trajectory. The OECD also considers the so-called "transformative competencies" as a special educational result, which are necessary for individual success in the modern world and for social well-being.
Unfortunately, contemporary school remains to a large extent what Goffman called a "total institution", assuming a rigid system of rules and regulations, in which it is quite difficult to find opportunities for proactivity. Under these circumstances, participation in extracurricular activities becomes of special importance for developing children’s agency. The available literature shows that extracurricular activities of schoolchildren have great potential in terms of the formation of agency, since its format implies, in comparison with formal school education, more room for independence, initiative, and free choice [Lareau, Weininger, 2008; Peterson et al., 2013; Kosaretsky et al., 2019]. A number of studies have shown that extracurricular activities make a significant contribution to the formation of such qualities as perseverance, independence, self-confidence, creativity, and social activity [Fletcher, Nickerson, Wright, 2003; Baker, 2008; Durlak, Weissberg, Pachan, 2010; Baharom, Sharfuddin, Iqbal, 2017].
At present, literature lacks tools for assessing agency of children and adolescents in formal school and extracurricular education (Sorokin, Froumin, 2022; Cavazzoni, 2021), especially given high diversity between different educational contexts, as well as different ages, etc. Also, there are no general models for analysis and interpretation of the empirical results related to various possible manifestations of agency. In particular, lacking are models allowing to correlate different types and levels of children’s agency with external factors, including educational practices.
The present study is aimed at filling this research gap and investigating the relationship between agency (proactive behavior of certain manifestations) of schoolchildren with academic results in formal school education and with participation in various extracurricular activities.
Research questions:
- How the agency of schoolchildren manifests itself in various fields, such as extracurricular activities, the circle of peers, family, economic activities? What is the difference between groups of respondents with different educational characteristics in terms of manifestations of agency?
- How is the extent (or level) of proactive behavior (agency) of schoolchildren relates to their academic performance in school curriculum subjects? How strong is the correlation?
- How is the level of proactive behavior (agency) of schoolchildren relates to their involvement in extracurricular activities both at school and outside of school? Involvement in which extracurricular activities is most correlated with the level of agency of schoolchildren?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe data were obtained as a result of the survey of students of formal education institutions (schools) in the city of Yaroslavl (N = 4,914 Mage of children = 12.6, SD = 1.7; 50.3% female), aimed at studying the effects of participation in extracurricular activities at school and outside of school on the development of the so-called “soft skills”, academic results, curiosity, and proactive behavior (agency). The sample of the study is random and representative for all schools in Yaroslavl (which if a relatively big city in Russia with approximately 600 000 of population).
Among the study participants, 48.6% noted that the mother or stepmother has tertiary education, and 31.26% of the respondents have both parents with tertiary education. Next, 37.8% of the respondents have a father or stepfather with tertiary education. At the same time, 0.8% of the respondents noted that they do not have "this parent – mother or stepmother," and 5.8% of the respondents – "there is no parent – father or stepfather." Thus, it can be argued that the vast majority of the study participants live in full families, and 48.8% of the respondents live with a brother or sister.
More than half of the respondents (65%) attend some extracurricular activities. On average, the study participants attend 2 extracurricular courses. At the same time, half (50.5%) of those participating in extracurricular activities attend only 1 course. About a third of the respondents (30.3%) attend 2 courses. There is no gender asymmetry in the number of courses among the study participants. The average time spent on extracurricular activities is 7.74 hours per week.
The questionnaires had special section aimed at assessing proactive behavior (agency). In particular, the respondents were asked whether their parents participated in choosing of extracurricular activities (or the decision was made solely by a child him- or herself), whether they tend to take the initiative and make decisions about everyday activities in the company of peers, how the decisions are made about joint activities with parents, and where from they obtain most of the money for their personal expenses (for instance, do they have a paid working experience). The respondents' responses for each category were ranked and as a result, a total integral indicator (agency index) was calculated, i.e., the level of agency for each respondent.
Finally, information about children's participation in extracurricular activities was juxtaposed with the agency index.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe level of agency increases depending on the child’s age reflected through the corresponding stages of education, that is the transition of a child to the next educational level from junior school to secondary school and then to high school.
A non-linear relationship between the level of agency and academic performance at school was identified. On the one hand, the higher the grades of academic performance in various subjects, the lower the proportion of the respondents who are characterized by a lack of agency. However, the highest academic scores are more likely to be characteristic of the respondents who demonstrate an average level of agency. Remarkably, the highest level of agency did not correspond with the highest academic scores at school.
At the same time, the participation of schoolchildren in extracurricular activities demonstrates a strong positive relationship with the level of agency. Only 28.8% of the respondents with a low level of agency are involved in extracurricular activities. Among schoolchildren with a high level of agency, 83.3% are involved in extracurricular activities. The respondents with a low level of agency attend an average of 1.9 courses. The respondents with a high level of agency attend on average 2.8 courses. The respondents with a low level of agency spend an average of 7.4 hours per week on extracurricular activities, and 12.1 hours per week with a high agency level.
The higher the level of agency, the higher the proportion of the respondents involved in extracurricular activities of all types. It is important to note that, with an increase in the level of agency, the involvement of schoolchildren in the courses that prepare children for technical colleges, university, tourism, and crafts in school increases most significantly. Similar increases are observed in courses on crafts, tourism, science, and technology performed outside of school.
ReferencesBaharom M. N., Sharfuddin M., Iqbal J. (2017) A Systematic Review on the Deviant Workplace Behavior. Review of Public Administration and Management, 5(3), 1–8.
Baker C. N. (2008) Under-Represented College Students and Extracurricular Involvement: The Effects of Various Student Organizations on Academic Performance. Social Psychology of Education, 11(3), 273-298.
Cavazzoni, F., Fiorini, A., & Veronese, G. (2021). How Do We Assess How Agentic We Are? A Literature Review of Existing Instruments to Evaluate and Measure Individuals' Agency. Social Indicators Research, 159(3), 1125-1153.
Durlak J. A., Weissberg R. P., Pachan M. (2010) A Meta-Analysis of After-School Programs that Seek to Promote Personal and Social Skills in Children and Adolescents. American Journal of Community Psychology, 45(3). P. 294-309.
Fletcher A. C., Nickerson P., Wright K.L. (2003). Structured Leisure Activities in Middle Childhood: Links to Well‐Being. Journal of Community Psychology, 31(6), 641– 659.
Kosaretsky S. G., Goshin M. Ye., Belikov A. A., Kudryavtseva M. A., Maksimova A. S., Poplavskaya A. A., Yankevich S. V., Petlin A. V., Zhulyabina N. M. (2019). Extracurricular Education of Children: Unified Diversity. Moscow: HSE.
Lareau A. & Weininger E. B. (2008). Class and the Transition to Adulthood. Social Class: How Does It Work.
Peterson T., Fowler S., Dunham T. F. (2013) Creating the Recent Force Field: A Growing Infrastructure for Quality Afterschool and Summer Learning Opportunities. Expanding Minds and Opportunities. Washington, DC: Collaborative Communications Group.
Sorokin P. S., Froumin I. D. (2022) Education As a Source for Transformative Agency: Theoretical and Practical Issues. Voprosy Obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow, 1, 116-137.
Sorokin P. S., Zykova A. V. (2021) «Transformative Agency» as a Subject of Research and Development in the 21st Century. Monitoring of Public Opinion: Economic and Social Changes, 5, 216–241.
Udehn L. (2002) The Changing Face of Methodological Individualism. Annual Review of Sociology, 28(1), 479–507.
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