Modeling Educational Performance Using School Demographics and Teacher Characteristics

Abstract

High-dimensional educational datasets often exhibit sparsity, grouped predictors, and locally correlated covariates, limiting the effectiveness of conventional regression methods. We propose an Adaptive Weighted Group Fused LASSO estimator that jointly performs adaptive variable selection, group regularization, and coefficient fusion within a unified penalized regression framework. An efficient ADMM algorithm is developed, and asymptotic properties, including consistency, oracle property, and debiased asymptotic normality, are established. Simulation studies demonstrate superior estimation and prediction performance compared with existing penalized methods. An application to Alabama public school mathematics proficiency data illustrates improved model interpretability, predictive accuracy, and identification of the most influential institutional predictors.

69 pages, 6 figures, 9 tables