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Estimating the Causal Effect of High School Mathematics Coursetaking on Placement out of Postsecondary Remedial Mathematics

Showalter, Daniel A.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1395226381

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, Curriculum and Instruction Mathematics Education (Education).
This dissertation reports on a study designed to estimate the causal effect of taking pure mathematics courses in high school on the likelihood of placing out of postsecondary remedial mathematics. A nonparametric variant of propensity score analysis (marginal mean weighting through stratification) was used on a nationally representative dataset to test for a practically significant causal effect in three groups of students: all comparable students, students who were unlikely to take high-level mathematics courses, and students in a range of demographic categories. In the original analysis, two thirds of the analytic sample had to be discarded because students were not comparable on baseline characteristics; implications of this lack of comparability are discussed. A second analysis included twice as many students by recoding the treatment variable into a more equally-distributed hierarchy of mathematics classes. In both analyses, the estimated causal effect of taking mathematics courses on placement out of PRM failed to reach practical significance; with few exceptions, the same nonsignificant result was found regardless of propensity level or demographic category. The causal effect was lowest among students who had been least likely to take high-level mathematics courses in high school. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to assess the impact of missing values and to test the results under different assumptions. These findings suggest that enrollment in high school mathematics courses may not have as strong of an effect on placement out of postsecondary remedial mathematics as typically claimed in the research literature. More generally, the results suggest that hidden selection bias in many previous education studies may have unwittingly masked the inequity in the U.S. education system. Implications of these findings are discussed for policymakers, student-level decisionmakers, teachers, and researchers.
Robert Klein (Committee Chair)
Hea-Jin Lee (Committee Member)
Gordon Brooks (Committee Member)
Ginger Weade (Committee Member)
163 p.
Mathematics Education; Statistics
Mathematics education; coursetaking; remedial mathematics; placement; propensity score analysis; marginal mean weighting through stratification; social justice; educational equity; selection bias; causal inference; policy studies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Showalter, D. A. (2014). Estimating the Causal Effect of High School Mathematics Coursetaking on Placement out of Postsecondary Remedial Mathematics [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1395226381

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Showalter, Daniel. Estimating the Causal Effect of High School Mathematics Coursetaking on Placement out of Postsecondary Remedial Mathematics. 2014. Ohio University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1395226381.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Showalter, Daniel. "Estimating the Causal Effect of High School Mathematics Coursetaking on Placement out of Postsecondary Remedial Mathematics." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1395226381

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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© 2014, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.