Development of Competencies during Elementary School: Matthew or Compensatory Effects?
Final Report Abstract
The research project "Development of Competencies during Elementary School: Matthew or Compensatory Effects?" concludes with four papers that use data from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS-SC2). The goal was to examine different aspects of the Matthew effect and the compensatory effect, which refer to the widening or narrowing of educational achievement gaps over time. The first article, “Matthew or compensatory effects? Factors that influence the math literacy of primary‐school children in Germany”, focuses on the development of math skills from grade 1 to grade 4 and analyses the influence of individual and family characteristics, such as performance group, gender, migration background, and parental education in a binary manner. The main finding of this article is that there are small compensatory effects for low and middle achievers, but high achievers can still retain their leading position. The article also discusses some limitations of the NEPS data, such as the selectivity of participation, the panel attrition, and the availability of some relevant information. The second article, “Latent Growth Curve, autoregressive Simplex and Nonlinear Autoregressive Latent Trajectory Models: A Comparison of different approaches to modelling growth curves”, extends the analysis of math skills development to the pre-school period and uses a nonlinear autoregressive latent trajectory model to account for the longitudinal data structure. This methodological approach demonstrates the advantages of using nonlinear autoregressive latent trajectory models for analysing competence growth data. The article shows that these models have a better fit and are less biased than latent growth curve models and autoregressive simplex models. The article also applies these models to the NEPS data and finds evidence for compensation effects for children with lower entry levels and a nearly stable lead for children with a high social status. The article confirms the finding of compensatory effects for low achievers, but also shows that parental education has a significant impact on the initial and the subsequent math performance of children. In addition to these findings, the conference paper "Social background, all-day childcare and skills development of primary school children" highlights the complex interactions between pupils' initial skills, socio-economic resources, educational background and extends the model to include factors relating to the type and duration of institutional school care. The nonparametric econometric analyses show that the skills development of primary school students is influenced by their parental educational background and their initial skills. The gaps between pupils with comparable initial skills, but different social origins expand during the primary school years. Moreover, there are complex interactions and interdependencies between the factors analysed. The results also show evidence of selective initial use of different school care services by parents with different educational levels and dependencies on their children's initial competences. But they do not show any significant influence of different institutional forms of school care on skills development during primary school. The third article, "Ability grouping in German secondary schools: The effect of non-academic-track schools on the development of Math competencies", shifts the focus to the transition to secondary school and the effect of the highly stratified German educational system on the math competencies of students who were suitable for an academic-track school but attended a non-academic-track. The article uses a propensity score analysis to compare the math outcomes of matched pairs of students and finds that attending a non-academic-track has a negative effect on the development of math skills of high-performing students. The article also points out some methodological challenges of using the NEPS data set for this research question, such as the regional variation and the low number of cases with respect to specific variables. In short, the project "Development of Competencies during Elementary School: Matthew or Compensatory Effects?" found some evidence of slight compensation effects between pupils with low and high initial competence levels, but also found strong reinforcing Matthew effects within pupils with comparable initial competence levels but across different educational backgrounds. These effects seem to be independent of attended institutional school care.
Publications
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Matthew or compensatory effects? Factors that influence the math literacy of primary‐school children in Germany. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 92(2), 518-534.
Herrmann, Sonja; Meissner, Christian; Nussbaumer, Madita & Ditton, Hartmut
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Bildungserträge atypischer Bildungsverläufe in Deutschland. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
Meißner, Christian
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Soziale Herkunft, ganztägige Betreuung und Kompetenzentwicklung von Grundschulkindern. GEBF 2024 Convention, Potsdam, Germany
Siegel, F., Gröschl, B., Ditton, H. & Scharenberg, K.
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Ability grouping in German secondary schools: The effect of non‐academic track schools on the development of Math competencies. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(2), 578-602.
Herrmann, Sonja & Bach, Katharina M.
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Latent growth curve, autoregressive simplex and nonlinear autoregressive latent trajectory models: A comparison of different approaches to modelling Growth curves. Communications in Statistics: Case Studies, Data Analysis and Applications, 11(1), 92-126.
Herrmann, Sonja
