Effective Students and Families: The Importance of Individual Characteristics for Achievement in High School

The school careers in secondary education are influenced by individual and environmental characteristics. Using longitudinal data on 7,000 students from 450 classes in 150 schools in The Netherlands, we present results on the importance of student and family characteristics for achievement (text comprehension and mathematics combined in a multivariate multilevel model) in high school. The main question is: To what extent do characteristics at the individual level influence the achievement of students in the 3rd year of secondary education? In order to answer this question, we use a structure of concentric circles. The achievement of students on text comprehension and mathematics appears to be determined by both structural and cultural characteristics. Student characteristics account for more variance than family characteristics.