Please join us for the next Developmental Brown Bag

Thursday, December 10, 2015

12 - 1 p.m.

Martin Room (4127) Sennott Square

Department of Psychology

Featuring:

AJ Koury, PhD

Estimating the Effect of Parental Education on Summer Learning: How Method Matters

Abstract: Children with better-educated mothers, on average, enter kindergarten with more of the academic skills necessary for early success and maintain an advantage throughout schooling. One potential mechanism by which children with more educated mothers maintain and grow their initial academic advantage is through summer learning. Despite well-established associations between maternal education and academic achievement, little is known about how mothers’ educational attainment relates to learning over the summer. In determining how best to estimate the relation between maternal education and summer learning, it is necessary to take into account that different modeling techniques will yield different results, which is important to consider given that policymakers are likely to accept the estimates at face value. To address this issue, this study examined the effect of parental education on summer learning using two different analytic strategies, highlighting the different estimates obtained from each. Using nationally representative data from the ECLS-k:2011, the present study documented the differences in summer learning between kindergarten and first grade in reading and math using change score regression models and regressor variable with and without clustering. Results suggest that estimates are, in fact, different across modeling strategy. Although the pattern that children with more educated mothers tend to gain more over the summer than those with less educated mothers holds across models, the factors associated with these findings differ by analytic technique. In essence, the different estimates suggest distinct and potential solutions to increasing summer learning for children whose mothers have varying levels of education.