Effects of Socioeconomic Factors on Public High School Outcomes and Rankings

The authors used data on public high schools in New Hampshire to demonstrate how the socioeconomic status (SES) of the district can help explain variations in students’ average standardized test scores and college-attendance rates and subsequent rankings of schools within states. The authors show how states can use multiple-outcome measures to derive an alternative ranking of high schools that removes the contributions of SES to the school-level outcomes and how these rankings compare with similar rankings that would be obtained solely on the basis of observed outcomes. Results demonstrate that socioeconomic factors account for a large portion of the variations in school-level outcomes in New Hampshire and that the subsequent rankings of schools can change dramatically after controlling for these factors. The methodology that the authors present can be replicated easily in other states and applied to different choices of outcome and control measures.