A Study of the Changing Academic Achievement Gap through Panel Data

Abstract

 This paper attempts to show the actual situation of the academic achievement gap among social classes by analyzing the results of previous research using panel data on academic achievement in mathematics. This type of research is still extremely rare in Japan, so it is anticipated to be valuable research material. In addition, through this analysis, we can glimpse the implications for academic achievement research in the future.
 From the year 2000 onward, there has been considerable research into “academic achievement” which tries to positively clarify the relationship between academic achievement and social class in Japan. Although this previous research has pointed out that the academic achievement gap occurs at an early stage of education, in Japan there is less data (panel data) which tracks students’ academic achievements; thus it is still unclear whether this academic achievement gap is widening through compulsory education. So based on previous research conducted abroad, this paper attempts to analyze the changes in children’s academic achievement gaps in Japan.
 Also, in the context of research on meritocracy, the correlation of academic achievement and effort (learning hours) through analyzing cross-sectional data that was collected from one point research has been pointed out. But cross-sectional data does not clarify the relationships between academic achievement and study time for individual changes. Also, we could not conduct any analysis with elimination of “unobserved heterogeneity”. This paper tries to clarify these problems by using panel data and analysis through the fixed effect model and random effect model.
 The panel data used in this paper were collected in the Kanto and Tohoku regions from 2003 through 2010. The research focused on the 3rd and 6th grades in elementary school and 3rd year in junior high school and used the academic achievement in mathematics and questionnaires.
 The results of this analysis, clarify three points. These are: 1) The academic achievement gap does not change; 2) The academic achievement gap can be seen as that between children whose parents have university degrees and children whose parents do not, as the former can maintain much higher academic achievement; 3) The results of eliminating “unobserved heterogeneity” still show that individual effort has an independently positive effect on academic achievement.