The purpose of the present study is investigating the correlation between school quality and family socioeconomic background and students' mathematics achievement in the Middle East. The countries in comparison are UAE, Syria, Qatar, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Lebanon, Jordan, and Bahrain. The study utilized data from IEA's Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) of 2011. Analysis of the data used the hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) and the data was analyzed in two levels: student and school. Separate models were developed for each country. The final models for most of the countries suggest similar results. Comparison of explained variance in school and family levels revealed that school is a more important factor in explaining the variance of students' mathematics achievement in all countries, excluding Syria. In most of the studied countries, some variables, such as parents' education and family economic status, show a weaker correlation with academic achievement compared to school resources, educational climate, and the number of enrolments of school.

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