Effects of IB Participation on Mathematics Achievement and Growth, 2001-2004 in Academy School District Twenty
Executive Summary
This report describes the results of the longitudinal study of the effects of the International Baccalaureate (IB) program on mathematics achievement and growth from 2001 through 2004 in grades 5-8, and 8-10. Although the IB program is an “open-enrollment” program, admitting any student who requests admittance, IB students consistently out-perform their peers on all CSAP assessments. The question that this study seeks to answer is whether the higher academic achievement is most likely due solely to selection effects such as academic ability and prior achievement, motivation, family background characteristics, etc., or whether the IB program has a unique, value-added effect on student achievement and growth in mathematics.
Several different analytic techniques are used to answer the research questions, including descriptive procedures, t-tests for differences in means, bivariate correlations, multiple linear regression, and the multilevel mixed effects technique, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). Hierarchical Linear Models (HLM) is used to evaluate the effects of IB participation on student growth in mathematics achievement, controlling for student background characteristics. The HLM models estimated are models of individual change.
The most striking results from these analyses are:
- Although average grade 5-8 mathematics scores are higher for students in the middle years
- IB program, their growth rate appears lower than for non-IB students. Thus, the middle school program does not appear to provide an obvious acceleration to students’ learning growth in mathematics.
- Conversely, IB students in the diploma program demonstrate significant average annual gains over their non-IB counterparts.
- Students in the IB diploma program score significantly higher on the CSAP mathematics assessments of grades 8 through 10.
- Additional years of participation in the IB program during middle and high school appear to be associated with greater gains in mathematics achievement in high school.
- Students’ mathematics performance in grade 5 is strongly related to their reading ability in grade 5.
- Students’ mathematics performance in grade 8 is strongly related to their reading ability in grade 8.
- Unlike reading performance and growth, growth in math during middle or high school does not appear to be related to prior achievement.
- Males out-score females by 15 points, on average, on the grade 8 mathematics assessment.
Although this study suggests that IB participation has a positive impact on student achievement and gains in mathematics during middle and high school, the main effects are relatively small. The homogeneity and typically high performance of District 20 students makes it difficult to discriminate between groups of students and to evaluate the effectiveness of many school programs designed to increase achievement. Another likely explanation is interaction between participation in the IB program and selection effects (e.g., students’ academic ability and prior achievement, interest, motivation, family background, parental involvement, etc.) that cannot be disentangled. We also cannot know how these IB students would have performed without the IB program.
Full report (PDF 595KB)
