Reporting Student Socioeconomic Status (SES) on The Nation’s Report Card
Key Takeaways
- The 2024 Nation’s Report Card will include a new measure of student socioeconomic status.
- Eligibility for free or reduced-price lunch will continue to be reported on The Nation’s Report Card, along with its decades-long trends in the data, under the label “economically disadvantaged.”
Beginning with the 2024 Nation’s Report Card, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) will report a new composite measure of socioeconomic status (SES).
Congress requires NAEP to report on differences in achievement for groups of students, including by socioeconomic status. Since 2003, the program has used students' eligibility for the National School Lunch Program (sometimes referred to as free- or reduced-price lunch) to account for students’ economic backgrounds. However, there has been growing concern that eligibility for the free- or reduced-price lunch program is both incomplete, tapping only the economic part of socioeconomic status, and insufficient, being a simple yes/no measure.
To address the issue, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which administers NAEP, developed a composite measure, using data NAEP already collects, rather than relying on eligibility for the lunch program alone.
Components of SES Index |
Data Source |
|---|---|
Student eligibility for free- or reduced-price lunch |
NCES has collected this data from school records since 2003. |
Percentage of students in the school eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch at grades 4, 8, or 12 |
Since 2003, taken from NAEP School Administrator Questionnaire, specifically: During this school year, about what percentage of students in your school was eligible to receive a free- or reduced-price lunch through the National School Lunch Program? |
Number of books in a student’s home |
Reported by students in grades 4, 8, and 12 on the NAEP Student Questionnaire since 2003, specifically: About how many books are there in your home?
|
Highest level of education of either parent |
Reported by 8th grade and 12th grade students on the NAEP Student Questionnaire since 2003, specifically: How far in school did your mother go?/How far in school did your father go?
|
The new SES index offers a more fine-grained understanding of socioeconomic status than eligibility for the National School Lunch Program alone. An analysis shows the new measure better explains the variation in individual students’ test scores and achievement gaps between groups of students than the free- or reduced-price eligibility measure alone.
- How will the SES Index appear on The Nation’s Report Card? NCES will share more information on how the index will appear on The Nation’s Report Card in the weeks leading up to the release.
- Will The Nation’s Report Card still include a variable about eligibility for free- or reduced-price lunch? Yes, eligibility for free- or reduced-price lunch will continue to be reported on The Nation’s Report Card, along with its decades-long trend lines, but will be newly labeled as “economically disadvantaged.”
- When will the 2024 Nation’s Report Card be released? The 2024 Nation’s Report Card will be released in early 2025, instead of fall 2024, to allow time for NCES to study any impact from a change in assessment devices. NCES informed states and TUDA districts of these changes in April 2023.
Further Reading
- Proposal for a NAEP SES Index: Background, Findings, and Remaining Challenges, American Institutes for Research
- Next NAEP to Take Deeper Look at Poverty’s Connection to Students’ Achievement, Education Week
- Explaining Achievement Gaps: The Role of Socioeconomic Factors, Fordham Institute
- America’s Gradebook, Urban Institute
- Understanding the Black-White Test Score Gap in the First Two Years of School, The Review of Economics and Statistics
- Inequality at the starting gate, Economic Policy Institute