The effect of school population socioeconomic status on individual student academic achievement.

TLDR: This paper examined the relationship between the socioeconomic status of peers and individual academic achievement and found that peer family social status does indeed have a significant and substantive independent effect on individual academic performance only slightly less than an individuals own social status.

Abstract: This study addresses the question of how the socioeconomic status (SES) of peers affects individual academic achievement. The authors examined this relationship while controlling for a variety of sociodemographic factors including a students own SES. They measured student SES using participation in the federal free/reduced price school lunch program as an indicator of poverty status and parental educational and occupational background as a measure of family social status. These measures are aggregated to the school-level to define the SES of the peer population. Student achievement is a factor score of the three tenth grade components of the Louisiana Graduation Exit Examination. The authors found that peer family social status does indeed have a significant and substantive independent effect on individual academic achievement only slightly less than an individuals own family social status. (authors)