Estimating classroom-level influences on literacy and numeracy: A twin study

Abstract

Classroom-level influences on literacy skills in kindergarten through Grade 2, and on literacy and numeracy skills in Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9, were examined by comparing the similarity of twins who shared or did not share classrooms with each other. We analyzed two samples using structural equation modeling adapted for twin data. The first, Study 1, was of Australia-wide tests of literacy and numeracy, with 1,098; 1,080; 790, and 812 complete twin pairs contributing data for Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9, respectively. The second, Study 2, was of literacy tests from 753 twin pairs from kindergarten through Grade 2, which included a sample of United States and Australian students and was a reanalysis and extension of Byrne et al. (2010). Classroom effects were mostly nonsignificant; they accounted for only 2–3% of variance in achievement when averaged over tests and grades. Although the averaged effects may represent a lower-bound figure for classroom effects, and the design cannot detect classroom influences limited to individual students, the results are at odds with claims in public discourse of substantial classroom-level influences, which are mostly portrayed as teacher effects.