MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS OF UPPER SECONDARY STUDENTS IN A ROMANIAN CITY
MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS OF UPPER SECONDARY STUDENTS IN A ROMANIAN CITY

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to investigate through hierarchical linear regression the relationships of academic performances of students in grades 10-12 from the city of Oradea (North-West Romania) with contextual variables describing the social composition of educational collectivities as well as the distribution of material and human resources. The sample is a subset of the initial two-stage random sample of 3500 students from grades 8-12, surveyed through a self-administered questionnaire within the second wave of the longitudinal study entitled “Adolescents, future citizens”, funded by the National Council for Research in Higher Education through the research grant A497/2006. An important conclusion of the analysis is that more than half of the variation of school results is covered by differences between schools and classes. The type of school, its social composition and the distribution of human resources among schools correlate all significantly with the educational achievements of students net of individual and classroom variables. Compositional effects as well as segregation and differentiation of schools and students are reflected in the multilevel decomposition of academic performance. The article discusses the results having in mind 1) the theoretical status of presumed compositional effects; 2) the aims of improving school effectiveness altogether with reducing gaps in distribution of educational opportunities and 3) the methodological limitations of my analyses.

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