Centering Critical Consciousness and Structural Equity: A Multilevel Analysis of School-Level Factors on the Odds of Being Overage for Grade within an Urban Public School District

Background and Purpose: Students who are overage for grade face an increased risk of academic disengagement and leaving school without a diploma. Emerging research suggests these outcomes are not solely the result of individual student challenges but are shaped by broader institutional factors. Grounded in critical consciousness, this study embraces an active interrogation of systems of oppression and a commitment to using research as a tool for social transformation. Guided by the Transformative Racial Equity Framework (TREF), we adopt a critical quantitative approach to examine how school-level characteristics—including school poverty rate, suspension rates, and perceptions of school safety climate and student–teacher trust—relate to the likelihood of students becoming overage for grade. Rejecting the notion of data as neutral, this study recognizes the political nature of quantitative work and uses multilevel modeling to surface how educational structural inequities within schools perpetuate systemic oppression, rather than attributing outcomes to individual-level deficits. Schools are framed as organizations that can either mitigate or reinforce broader patterns of social harm, with the goal of informing transformative institutional change.

Methods: The study analyzes four cohorts of students (N = 62,314) from a large urban public school district, linking administrative student records with school-level indicators of poverty, discipline rates, and climate drawn from an annual organizational survey. Multilevel mixed-effects binary logistic regression models were used to examine how school-level and individual-level variables predicted being overage for grade. Additional models explored whether racial and gender inequities are more strongly associated with differences across schools or within schools.

Results: Higher levels of school poverty (AOR = 2.02; 95% CI [1.69, 2.41]) and higher suspension rates (AOR = 1.32; 95% CI [1.19, 1.46]) were associated with significantly increased odds of students becoming overage for grade, even after adjusting for individual academic and attendance factors. While positive perceptions of school safety and student–teacher trust were initially associated with lower odds of being overage, these effects attenuated after accounting for individual characteristics. Analyses revealed that Black students (AOR = 1.18; 95% CI [1.06, 1.31]) and male students (AOR = 1.15; 95% CI [1.11, 1.20]) faced higher odds of being overage, both across and within schools, reflecting the impact of educational structural inequities embedded in educational institutions.

Conclusions and Implications: This study underscores the necessity of critical consciousness at every stage of the research process—from framing questions to interpreting findings and resisting deficit narratives. By moving beyond individual-level explanations, the findings reveal how educational structural conditions within schools—such as concentrated poverty and exclusionary discipline practices—shape students’ academic trajectories and contribute to persistent racial and gender inequities. Although schools are embedded within broader systems of oppression, they remain pivotal spaces for transformation. Advancing educational equity demands not only technical reforms but also a sustained commitment to challenging dominant ideologies and dismantling the systemic conditions that reproduce harm. Through intentional, equity-centered change powered by critical consciousness, schools can serve as powerful levers for fostering more just and inclusive outcomes for all students.