Long-Term Total Negative Effects of School-Average Ability on Diverse Educational Outcomes

Abstract

In a longitudinal analysis of students measured on five occasions over eight critical developmental years (grade 10 to five years after high school graduation), school-average ability (M-ABIL) had negative effects on academic self-concept (ASC), school grades, and educational and occupational aspirations. For educational attainment, the direct effects were positive, the indirect effects negative, and the total effects nonsignificant. Previous research has typically reported short-term negative direct effects of M-ABIL, known as the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE). Using complex structural equation models, we demonstrate that long-term total (direct plus indirect) effects are systematically much more negative than direct effects across diverse educational outcomes, and explore how M-ABIL effects on long-term distal outcomes are mediated through effects on more proximal variables and distinguished from effects of school-average SES. We also demonstrate how ’grading on a curve’ effects (in which equally able students get lower school grades in schools with a high M-ABIL) – often confounded with the BFLPE in short-term studies – is qualitatively different from the BFLPE when considered longitudinally.