Gary Neil Marks

The first section of this paper sets the record straight regarding many of Debouwere's (2024, Review of Education , 12 , e3445) specific criticisms. The second section discusses the magnitude of the SES‐achievement relationship, specifically Debouwere's (2024) contention that the correlation is strong around 0.5 or 0.6 compared to observed correlations mostly between 0.2 and 0.3. The third section deals with five issues that Debouwere (2024) raises in his paper: (1) the stability of SES vis‐à‐vis cognitive ability; (2) the accuracy of children's reports of parents' socioeconomic characteristics; (3) whether teachers discriminate by students' SES; (4) the importance of cognitive ability for educational differentiation (i.e., tracking and streaming); and (5) SES effects on student achievement, controlling for prior achievement. The fourth section discusses the role of genetics in student achievement. Meta‐analyses and other studies indicate that about 50%–70% of the variance in student achievement is attributable to genetics (i.e., the heritability). The high heritability of student achievement accounts for its high stability, its strong correlations with cognitive ability and the weak effects of SES, net of prior achievement or cognitive ability.

In this journal, Sciffer et al. (Large-scale Assessments in Education 10:1–22, 2022), hereafter SP&M, conclude that school socioeconomic compositional (SEC) or school socioeconomic status (school-SES) effects in Australia are substantial and substantively important for research and policy. This paper demonstrates that these claims are unwarranted. Their SEC estimates are much larger than estimates from comparable studies and a metastudy. Despite plausible theoretical reasons and empirical evidence, SP&M do not consider that school academic composition is a significant predictor of student achievement independent of SEC. SEC effects are confounded by academic composition and are typically trivial when considering academic composition. The second part of this paper compares SP&M’s estimates with analysis of the same data, from the Australian National Assessments in Performance—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). In a model corresponding to SP&M analyses comprising demographics, SES, school-SES, and student-level prior achievement, the effects of school-SES are small, with standardized effects mostly less than 0.10. With the addition of academic composition measured by school-level prior achievement, school-SES effects are effectively zero. In contrast, academic composition has significant, albeit small, impacts on student achievement. Therefore, contrary to SP&M’s (2022) conclusion, school-SES effects on student achievement in NAPLAN are negligible, whereas school-level prior achievement has small effects. That is not to say that school-SES is always irrelevant, but any assessment of its importance must consider both student- and school-level prior achievement.

Modernization and meritocratic theories contend that with modernization, socioeconomic background (SES) becomes less important for educational and socioeconomic attainments, while cognitive ability becomes more important. However, the evidence is mixed. This study investigates if the effects of SES and cognitive ability on educational and labor market outcomes have changed in the US by comparing two longitudinal cohort studies: the 1960 Project Talent and the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. For all outcomes—grades-at-school, educational and occupational attainment, and income—cognitive ability clearly has stronger effects than a composite and broad measure of SES. The effects of cognitive ability for grades-at-school and income are notably stronger in the more recent cohort, whereas its effects on educational and occupational attainment are similar. SES effects, net of ability, for educational and occupational attainment are only moderate and for school grades and income are very small (β < 0.10). However, for each outcome SES effects are stronger in the more recent NLSY79 cohort. This is attributed to ability being a stronger influence on the educational and socioeconomic attainments of NLSY79 parents compared to Project Talent parents. These analyses suggest that in the US, cognitive ability has long been an important, and SES a much weaker, influence on educational and subsequent socioeconomic outcomes.

A small minority of Irish students attend fee-charging second-level schools. However, media analyses of the backgrounds of those students who go on to more sought-after tertiary educational institutions or degree courses suggest that a disproportionate number of them were attendees at fee-charging schools. There are a few reasons why this might be the case. In this analysis, the longitudinal data points of the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) study are exploited to weigh up the evidence behind differing explanations. An estimated measure of Leaving Certificate success was generated for 3105 participants in wave 4 of the GUI. From waves 1 and 2, the ability of those participants was calculated based on their performance in several standardised tests taken prior to attending second-level school. The analysis found that while the students who attended fee-charging schools were about 9% ahead in Leaving Certificate performance, they had roughly the same lead in measured ability on entry into the second-level schools. The analysis found a significant but marginal positive effect on attending private schools. This result is in line with the general international findings. Ireland’s hybrid funding structure for fee-paying schools is discussed. Gender and household income effects were noted.

Children of mothers pf the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth

Prior achievement is essential to estimating the role of schools and school factors on student outcomes because it measures students’ pre-existing knowledge and skills. However, its very strong effects and their implications for research and policy are not widely appreciated. Analyses of student achievement in five domains shows that prior achievement, measured 2 years before, has overwhelming effects, albeit with domain and year-level (grade) differences. When considering prior achievement, only a small minority of schools have effects that significantly differ from the average school effect on student performance. The variation in school effects is quite limited, and there are only trivial jurisdictional differences in school effects. The contemporaneous effects of parents’ occupational group and education – factors prominent in school funding in Australia – are negligible. These findings are likely to pertain to other educational contexts since prior achievement typically has strong, or very strong, relationships with achievement.

Recently in this journal, Sciffer, Perry, and McConney ( 2020 Sciffer, Michael G. , Laura B. Perry, and Andrew McConney. 2020. “Critiques of Socio-Economic School Compositional Effects: Are They Valid?” British Journal of Sociology of Education 41 (4): 462–475. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2020.1736000. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] ) argued that school socioeconomic-background (SES) compositional effects are important for both research and policy. In response, this commentary argues that realistic school SES effects can only be identified in properly specified models. Otherwise, the estimated school effects are very likely to be spurious due to the correlation between school SES and important, but omitted, individual-level influences, most notably prior achievement. In properly specified models with reliable student-level measures, school SES effects are either small or very small. This commentary includes an empirical demonstration of moderate school SES effects becoming small or very small with appropriate controls.

Students’ socioeconomic status (SES) is central to much research and policy deliberation on educational inequalities. However, the SES model is under severe stress for several reasons. SES is an ill‐defined concept, unlike parental education or family income. SES measures are frequently based on proxy reports from students; these are generally unreliable, sometimes endogenous to student achievement, only low to moderately intercorrelated, and exhibit low comparability across countries and over time. There are many explanations for SES inequalities in education, none of which achieves consensus among research and policy communities. SES has only moderate effects on student achievement, and its effects are especially weak when considering prior achievement, an important and relevant predictor. SES effects are substantially reduced when considering parent ability, which is causally prior to family SES. The alternative cognitive ability/genetic transmission model has far greater explanatory power; it provides logical and compelling explanations for a wide range of empirical findings from student achievement studies. The inadequacies of the SES model are hindering knowledge accumulation about student performance and the development of successful policies. Context and implications: Rationale for this study: This review was written in response to the disconnect between the literature surrounding student achievement studies, and the cognitive psychology and behavioural genetic academic literatures. It is well‐established that student achievement is closely related to cognitive ability and both have sizable genetic components, findings largely ignored in achievement studies. This review’s aim is for more considered responses to socioeconomic inequalities in student achievement by both researchers and policymakers. Why the new findings matter: The review provides overwhelming evidence that much of the current thinking about SES and student achievement is mistaken. Implications for researchers and policymakers: The current emphasis on SES is misleading and wastes considerable human and financial resources that could much better be utilized. The focus should be on student performance ensuring that low achievers have rewarding educational and occupational careers, and raising the overall skill levels of students, not on the nebulous, difficult to measure, concept of SES, which is only moderately associated with achievement.