Deciphering Socioeconomic Status: Understanding the Association Between SES and Student Background Variables in the National Assessment of Educational Progress

National Assessment of Educational Progress uses proxies of socioeconomic status when reporting results by key groups. In order to examine the validity of these proxy variables, current study uses a special sample of around 1300 students who took both NAEP and ECLS-K grade eight reading assessments. These students answered the background questionnaire in both assessments. In addition, ECLS-K also collected information from parents about their socioeconomic status. Therefore, measures of socioeconomic status found in ECLS-K were used to evaluate and understand the associations among SES and other proxy measures of SES found in NAEP. Results of this study allow for the evaluation of variables collected in NAEP to measure SES against parent-reported SES collected in ECLS-K.