An Analysis of the Differences in the Frequency of Students' Disengagement in Urban, Rural, and Suburban High Schools

We study how student behaviors associated with disengagement differ between different school settings. Towards this, we investigate the variation in the frequency of off-task behavior, gaming the system, and carelessness in an urban school, a rural school, and a suburban school in the United States of America. This analysis is conducted by applying automated detectors of these behaviors to data from students using the same Cognitive Tutor educational software for high school Geometry, across an entire school year. We find that students in the urban school go off-task and are careless significantly more than students in the rural and suburban schools. Differences between schools in terms of gaming the system are less stable. These findings suggest that some of the differences in achievement by school type may stem from differences in engagement and problem behaviors.