Learning in Context: A Cross-Classified Multilevel Investigation of Family, School, and Neighborhood Influences on Adolescent Academic Achievement

Background and Purpose:  Traditionally, academic success has been understood as a product of student capacity and effort. No Child Left Behind shifted the focus to school quality, but sixteen years later, we lag behind other countries in academic achievement; persistent race and class gaps make this situation even more troubling.  Fixing this problem requires new knowledge to clarify how and why some youth struggle to achieve to their capacity while others thrive. Toward that end, the present study focuses on the overlapping contexts in which youth learn – family, school, and neighborhood – to assess how different domains of daily life influence academic achievement.  

Methods: This study used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the largest nationally-representative longitudinal database capturing both school and neighborhood contexts.  Our analytic sample included data from 11,841 youth in 132 middle and high schools in the United States.

One criterion variable, academic achievement, was examined. Youth and family variables consisted of sex, age, race/ethnicity, and family socio-economic status (SES). Neighborhood-level variables consisted of proportions of affluent and poor residents, racial composition, and urbanicity. School-level variables consisted of school SES, student-body racial composition, and teacher education.

Cross-classified random-effects models, with individuals nested within schools and neighborhoods, were used to examine the influence of multiple contexts on academic achievement. Use of cross-classified modeling reduces bias and supports explicit modeling of influence at each system level.

Results:  Controlling for other factors, boys, white youth, and youth in families with higher SES demonstrated higher average achievement.  At the contextual level, two school factors (racial composition and school SES) and three neighborhood characteristics (affluence, racial composition and urbanicity) were significantly related to higher achievement. Most of the variability in outcome was between youth, but significant variability between schools (ICC = .17) and between neighborhoods (ICC = .05) also contributed to youth’s achievement.

Conclusions and Implications: By examining the multiple influences of family, school, and neighborhood, this study extends knowledge about the situated nature of academic achievement. In line with existing research, we found that schools with fewer low-income youth and fewer youth of color tend to have better outcomes.  At the neighborhood level, the share of affluent residents rather than the share of poor residents was predictive of achievement, regardless of school and family context.   This fits with a social capital perspective:  the presence of advantaged ties accrues benefits even in context of concentrated poverty.  At the individual level, youth who were privileged by race, class, and gender had higher average achievement, regardless of school and neighborhood context.  This reflects the embodiment of accumulated contextual advantages such privilege provides.  Overall, findings indicate that academic achievement occurs at the nexus of youth in multiple, and unequal, environments.  Consequently, improvements in school quality should not be expected to eliminate the achievement gap unless accompanied by investments in students’ socio-economic situations at home and in neighborhoods, and by explicit attention to the roles of race and gender in their daily lives. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.