Factors influencing education achievement

Abstract

This study sets out to examine the factors that influence human capital formation in predominately rural communities. The results indicated that parents’ educational attainment greatly influences the quality of education for their children. Thus, consolidating smaller poor schools in which the parents have limited education above primary and secondary schools, will not likely lead to much if any improvement in students' test scores.

Notes

 Data taken from Table 166 of the Digest of Education Statistics, 2002, US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.

 The authors would have preferred to run one model for all the districts for each grade level. However, each state uses a different testing instrument, which limits the comparison of test scores across states.

 Elasticity indicates how quickly one variable responds to changes in another. In this case, the coefficients represent how much ACT scores would change as the result of a 1% change in the variable measured.

 However, explanatory power of the regression is not very high, only 17.25%.