Focusing on science from a cross-country perspective, this study explores the relationship between 8th grade science achievement and student, teacher, and school characteristics. More specifically, this study will pay special attention to low socio-economic status (SES) students and seek to understand why some disadvantaged students are able to have higher than expected achievement in science given their SES while other disadvantaged students are not able to achieve beyond what would be expected given their background. This study will explore the multi-level relationship between the characteristics of students, their teachers, their schools, and student achievement in science. While looking at students in classrooms and in schools, this work will create as precise as possible a measure of student SES by drawing on recommendations of an expert panel commissioned by the National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) study. The study uses the most recent cycle (2011) of the Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS), to strategically select a six-country sample from the 45 participating countries. This six-country sample was selected by using the country level achievement and the standard deviation of that achievement. This will create a sample that has a range of equality in achievement and strength in achievement. This allows for making comparisons both across and within countries to better understand variations in the factors of student performance, especially for disadvantaged students.This paper builds on the existing research around socio-economic status (SES) and achievement by exploring in more detail the conditions in schools and classrooms around the world that might magnify or reduce the effect of SES on student achievement. The analysis looks at these questions: "What conditions help low SES students achieve higher than what would be expected given their SES?" and "What conditions hinder low SES students to achieve at or below what would be expected given their SES?" Investigating these questions will help to understand, in a global context, where disadvantaged students are being successful in their science classes, under what conditions, and as a result help to inform educational policy.The results suggest that there are clearly inequities in achievement and that these inequities may be further increased by other factors. These factors are present at all levels of analysis: the student level, the teacher/classroom level, and the school level. There are also variables that consistently had no impact at all levels with respect to student science achievement and there are also variables that were impactful but only within specific countries. Overall, there are no silver bullets present in these data that can do much on their own to help low SES students overcome their predicted achievement disadvantage. However there does appear to be the potential for a combination of factors being able to do more.
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