Differences in Access to Athletic Trainers in Public Secondary Schools Based on Socioeconomic Status

Context: Significant health care disparities exist in the United States based on socioeconomic status (SES) but the role SES has on secondary school athletes' access to athletic training services has not been examined on a national scale. Objective: To identify differences in access to athletic training services in public secondary schools based on school-SES. Design: Cross-Sectional Study Setting: Database secondary analysis. Patients or Other Participants: Data for 3,482 public high schools. Main Outcome Measures: Data were gathered from the Athletic Training Location and Services (ATLAS) database, United States Census Bureau, and National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). We included schools from 5 states with the highest, middle, and lowest poverty percentages (15 states total) and collected county median household income (MHI), percentage of students eligible for free and reduced lunch, race/ethnicity demographics, and access to athletic training services (full-time AT, part-time AT only, no AT) for each school. Data were summarized in standard deviations, means, medians, interquartile ranges (IQR), frequencies and proportions, one-way ANOVAs, and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Results: There were significant differences in school-SES between schools with full-time, part-time only, and no athletic training services. Schools with greater access to athletic training services had fewer students eligible for free and reduced lunch (full-time: 41.1%±22.3, part-time only: 45.8%±24.3, no AT: 52.9%±24.9, p<0.001). Similarly, county MHI was higher in schools with increased access to athletic training services (full-time: Median [IQR], $56,026 [$49,085–$64,557], part-time only: Median [IQR], $52,719 [$45,355–$62105], and no AT: Median [IQR], $49,584 [$41,094–$57,688], p<0.001). Conclusions: SES disparities were present in access to athletic training services in a national sample of public secondary schools. Access to athletic trainers positively influences student-athlete's health care across several measures. Pilot programs or government funds have been used previously to fund athletic training services and should be considered to ensure equitable access regardless of school-SES.

Secondary School Socioeconomic Status and Athletic Training Practice Characteristics

Context: Socioeconomic status (SES) is a significant predictor of morbidity and mortality across health outcomes. Limited information exists on how school SES impacts athletic training practice when a certified athletic trainer (AT) is present at secondary schools. Objective: To describe contact frequencies and service rates provided by ATs for injuries among secondary school student athletes and how these differ by school SES. Design: Cross-sectional study Setting: Athletic training room (ATR) visit days and AT services were collected from 77 secondary schools. Schools were separated into three school SES groups: affluent (n=31), average (n=29), and disadvantaged (n=17). Patients or Other Participants: Secondary school student-athletes participating in 12 boys' and 11 girls' sports who visited the ATR during the 2014–2015 through 2018–2019 academic years and received athletic or non-athletic injury care. Main Outcome Measures: Contact frequencies expressed as ATR visit days per injury, AT services per injury, and AT services per ATR visit day. Rates for service type utilized were expressed as the total count over reported athlete-exposures. Results: ATs documented 1,191 services. Affluent and average SES school communities provided greater contact frequencies for injury related care compared to disadvantaged school communities, particularly by AT services/injury (7.10±13.08 versus average: 9.30±11.60 and affluent: 9.40±12.20; p=0.020). Affluent school communities provided greater rates of services in five of the eleven service groups reported. No significant differences were observed among school SES groups in therapeutic exercises. Conclusions: Our findings reflect that AT practice characteristics may differ by school SES, but these differences do not appear to result in less medical care. Given the complexity and widespread effects of SES, future investigations should utilize a complex method to determine SES as well as aim to identify how SES may impact secondary school student athletes outside of AT practice characteristics.

A Partial Simulation Study of Phantom Effects in Multilevel Analysis of School Effects: The Case of School Socioeconomic Composition

Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) is often used to estimate the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) on academic achievement at different levels of an educational system. However, if a prior academic achievement measure is missing in a HLM model, biased estimates may occur on the effects of student SES and school SES. Phantom effects describe the phenomenon in which the effects of student SES and school SES disappear once prior academic achievement is added to the model. In the present analysis, partial simulation (i.e., simulated data are used together with real-world data) was employed to examine the phantom effects of student SES and school SES on science achievement, using the national sample of the United States from the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment. The results showed that the phantom effects of student SES and school SES are rather real. The stronger the correlation between prior science achievement and (present) science achievement, the greater the chance that the phantom effects occur.

Entropy of Co-Enrolment Networks Reveal Disparities in High School STEM Participation

The current study uses a network analysis approach to explore the STEM pathways that students take through their final year of high school in Aotearoa New Zealand. By accessing individual-level microdata from New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure, we are able to create a co-enrolment network comprised of all STEM assessment standards taken by students in New Zealand between 2010 and 2016. We explore the structure of this co-enrolment network though use of community detection and a novel measure of entropy. We then investigate how network structure differs across sub-populations based on students’ sex, ethnicity, and the socio-economic-status (SES) of the high school they attended. Results show the structure of the STEM co-enrolment network differs across these sub-populations, and also changes over time. We find that, while female students were more likely to have been enrolled in life science standards, they were less well represented in physics, calculus, and vocational (e.g., agriculture, practical technology) standards. Our results also show that the enrollment patterns of Asian students had lower entropy, an observation that may be explained by increased enrolments in key science and mathematics standards. Through further investigation of differences in entropy across ethnic group and high school SES, we find that ethnic group differences in entropy are moderated by high school SES, such that sub-populations at higher SES schools had lower entropy. We also discuss these findings in the context of the New Zealand education system and policy changes that occurred between 2010 and 2016.

Track recommendation procedures and the cancellation of the school leavers’ test during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands

Dutch students are allocated to different tracks in secondary school on the basis of teacher track recommendations in primary school. Usually, teachers form an initial track recommendation, and can upwardly adjust this recommendation on the basis of a final standardized test. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, this test was cancelled. During the outbreak, I collected data among Dutch teachers involved in the track recommendation procedure. Teachers varied in how they dealt with the cancellation of the final test: 50% did not consider adjustments in their track recommendations, while 40% did. Moreover, respondents mentioned different reasons for considering possible adjustments, including parental wishes and students’ school development during the school shutdown. School SES was unrelated to teachers’ considerations for making adjustments. However - given the criteria that teachers mentioned for making adjustments - within schools, students from advantaged backgrounds were potentially more likely to receive an upward adjustment in their recommendation.

How School Socioeconomic Status Affects Achievement Growth across School Transitions in Early Educational Careers

Our study investigates how changing socioeconomic status (SES) composition, measured as percentage free and reduced priced lunch (FRL), affects students’ math achievement growth after the transition to middle school. Using the life course framework of cumulative advantage, we investigate how timing, individual FRL status, and legacy effects of a student’s elementary school SES composition each affect a student’s math achievement growth. We advance research on school transitions by considering how changing contexts affect achievement growth across school transitions. Furthermore, we improve on school context research by measuring the ways that SES compositions across school transitions may be interconnected. Using state administrative panel data for third through eighth graders from 2009 to 2015, we use fixed effects to estimate math achievement growth by the end of eighth grade. Findings suggest that a student’s elementary SES composition has a legacy effect on middle school achievement growth net of his or her own achievement growth and middle school SES composition. In addition, SES composition effects differ depending on the timing of exposure and a student’s individual FRL status. Our study has important implications for both educational transition research and school effects research, which are discussed.

The Impact of School SES on Student Achievement: Evidence From U.S. Statewide Achievement Data

After the U.S. Supreme Court restricted the use of race in assigning students to schools, there was a surge in advocacy of school integration based on student socioeconomic status (SES). Benefits of socioeconomic integration have been supported by various studies finding significant effects of school SES on achievement after controlling for individual student SES. This article investigates school SES effects using statewide longitudinal achievement data from several U.S. states. School SES effects nearly vanish after controlling for a student’s prior achievement or, alternatively, controlling for stable differences among students using fixed effects models. The article concludes that large school SES effects often found in cross-sectional studies are artifacts of aggregation and are not a sound basis for SES-based school integration policies.

THE IMPACT OF POSITIVE SCHOOL EXPERIENCES AND SCHOOL SES ON DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS IN CHINESE CHILDREN: A MULTILEVEL INVESTIGATION

The current study investigates the effects of teacher support, school connectedness, and school socioeconomic status (SES) on youth depressive symptoms. Data were collected from a sample of 881 students in Grade 6 from 10 primary schools in Northwest China. Hierarchical linear modeling indicated that higher levels of teacher support, school connectedness, and school SES were significantly associated with fewer depressive symptoms. Further, the relationships between school-level SES and youth depressive symptoms varied by the participant’s perceived level of teacher support and perceived level of school connectedness. These findings underscore the importance of positive school experiences on child psychological outcomes. Implications for future research on Chinese youth are discussed.