The National Network of Partnership Schools: How Research Influences Educational Practice

The National Network of Partnership Schools was initiated in 1996 to assist schools, districts, and states in developing comprehensive programs of school, family, and community partnership as part of their school improvement efforts. Members of the National Network are provided with tools and strategies to implement partnership activities that promote students' success. These tools and strategies are based on over 15 years of research conducted by Epstein and her colleagues at Johns Hopkins University. Through a discussion of the development of the National Network, this article illustrates how research can be used to inform and improve educational practice in schools, districts, and states. It does so by highlighting the center's research on family and community involvement conducted since 1987 with elementary, middle, and high schools; school districts; and state departments of education across the United States. This research generated the knowledge needed to establish the National Network of Partnership Schools, which presently works with over 1,100 schools, 130 districts, and 12 states to help them develop permanent and productive school, family, and community partnership programs.     

Mediated diffusion: Translating professional practice across schools in a high-stakes system

Educational systems across the globe are attempting to reshape the vertical and horizontal dimensions of school accountability. The vertical dimension involves devolution of responsibility to individual schools while the horizontal typically entails promoting the professionalism of leaders and teachers through school networks and school-to-school pairings. In many systems, these shifts occur within an environment of high-stakes accountability. Little is known about the ways that high-stakes consequences for individual schools shape the translation of professional practice across schools. The study reported here traces the diffusion of data-informed practices in a formal pairing of two primary schools in England—a school ranked as “outstanding” and a school in “special measures,” a persistently low-achieving school. Study findings trace the ways in which the threat of consequences under which the low-achieving school operates shapes the diffusion of professional practice across schools. The study details how the lead school brokered, or mediated, state requirements, co-constructing the supported school’s narrative of improvement. Findings from this study illuminate the ways that vertical relationships within the system of schooling influence horizontal relationships across schools. Clarifying the shaping of professional practice across schools is increasingly critical as patterns of provision of schooling proliferate and the links among the state and schools become increasingly complex.     

Parent decision-making when selecting schools: The case of Nepal

This paper analyzes the parent decision-making processes underlying school selection in Nepal. The analysis is based on primary survey and focus group data collected from parent meetings in diverse local education markets in two districts of Nepal in 2011. It highlights three main arguments that are less frequently discussed in the context of school choice, including in developing countries. First, children who go to public schools play a significant role in their own decision-making on schooling; this complicates the currently predominant conceptualization that schooling decisions are primarily made by parents and school officials. Second, the gradual growth in private schools has led to significant sorting of students and created a stigma around public education. Finally, in contexts such as Nepal, that suffer from political conflict, and poor conditions for law and order, a school’s proximity to their home becomes a greater priority for students and families.     

浅谈教师培训机构在校本培训中的作用

在以基础教育新课程培训为核心内容的新一轮中小学教师继续教育中,校本培训将发挥越来越重要的作用。教师培训机构作为实施教师继续教育的主要基地,承担着为中小学开展校本培训提供指导、服务,进行管理和评价的功能。因而要充分认识教师培训机构在校本培训中的铺路搭桥作用。     

School Response to a Changing Labour Market

The presumed link between schooling and the economy has been a prime force in motivating educational reform proposals in many countries. Educators feel caught between expectations by many that schools will play a key role in labour market success for young people and the reality that their influence on labour market outcomes is relatively weak. Solving the problem is not possible, but neither is ignoring it. Schools face an intractable yet compelling problem.This paper looks at the way in which school districts in a Canadian province understand and try to respond to changes in the labour market and the nature of work. The paper is based on collaborative case studies of five school districts and surveys of school board members and chief superintendents. We conclude that people in school systems are aware in a general way of labour market changes, and see them as having negative implications for students. However the changing job situation seems to be an important but largely unanalyzed issue. There is relatively little discussion of school-work issues in schools and districts. Administrators and school board members rely on informal sources of information rather than gathering data about their own situation. Schools and districts are using various programmatic devices to address labour market needs, such as partnerships, work experience, or co-operative education, but all of these operate within the confines of a traditional model of schooling. None of the districts has a strategy for this issue or has made it a priority.We conclude with some suggestions for measures schools could reasonably take to respond more effectively to the impact of changes in work.     

Achievement at the higher education entry examinations in Greece: A Procrustean approach

The paper examines the way the national higher education entryexaminations in Greece are used to determine entry into the 100 percentgovernment-controlled state tertiary education system. The databaserefers to the population of all secondary education graduates taking (ornot taking) the June 2000 national secondary school examination. Thereis considerable achievement variation across regions and types ofschool. Poor districts, evening schools, and state schools areassociated with lower achievement. Private schools are associated withhigher achievement, even controlling for parental schooling and wealth.Regardless of the student's achievement in the national examinations,entry each year is mainly determined by the number of available places.Given the fact the state cannot afford to provide free access to allthose who want entry, the non-university cycle has expanded rapidly toaccommodate a greater number of students into ``higher educationtechnological institutes' that are most frequently not the candidates'first choice. Thus, the fable of Procrustes is revived in modernGreece.     

10 School decentralization and empowerment

School results for children of poverty ‐ those forced by that poverty to live in inner‐city neighbourhoods ‐generally indicate educational failure at a much higher rate than is seen for students nurtured by wealthier school districts. This failure in school severely limits chances of social and economic upward mobility, which translates into a waste of human capital for the nation's business‐industrial‐political complex, and dashed hopes, dreams and self‐esteem for the individual. Parents and concerned citizens from across socio‐economic strata, long aware of the general inadequacy of schools in poor communities, have demanded improvement, often seeking it through legal and political means. Important strategies among the various federal, state and local school reform efforts to make schooling a meaningful process for all students, and particularly the minority poor, are decentralization and citizen/parent empowerment, the focus of this chapter. The movement to decentralize school governance ‐ an effort to place control into the hands of the people being served ‐ has gained momentum and exists in some form in most large‐city school districts today. An extension of administrative decentralization, citizen/parent empowerment is seen as one of several factors, including teacher and administrator preparation, curriculum renewal, school financing, and school restructuring, vital in the improvement of schools. A look at the meaning and scope of decentralization, operationalized through citizen/parent empowerment, and its probable effectiveness in improving school outcomes indicates that, alone, it is insufficient to ensure positive academic and social performance in school.     

Gender,sexuality and schooling: Everyday life in junior secondary schools in Botswana and Ghana

In this paper, the focus is upon daily school practices in Junior Secondary Schools in Ghana and Botswana. The data from 12 ethnographic case studies have been used to explore how the institution of schooling is gendered. The analysis focuses predominantly on the informal practices of the hidden curriculum through a theoretical perspective that highlights these institutional processes as significant to the production of gender/sexual identities. Remarkable similarities in the pervasive and inequitable gender/sexual practices within schools across country contexts are discussed in three key areas: school management and duties, gender space and gender violence. These discussions of everyday school life illustrate the ways in which both normative institutional practices and human agency produce and regulate gender/sexual identities. This micro-level analysis provides important substantive and methodological insights into what goes on inside schools and into the contexts and experiences of schooling that are significant to policy discourses of gender, education and development.     

Single-sex schooling,gender and educational performance: Evidence using PISA data

The advantages and disadvantages of single-sex schooling continue to be a source of policy and public debate. Previous empirical evidence is somewhat ambiguous, with some studies finding a positive impact of single-sex schooling on education achievement and others finding no differences across school types. The relationship between single-sex schooling on academic outcomes is typically problematic to examine, as in most countries single-sex schools are selective and the numbers attending them are relatively small. In Ireland, a high proportion of secondary school children (~1/3) attend a single-sex school. In addition, these schools are largely state-funded and non-selective but differing in composition compared to mixed-sex schools. For this reason, the Irish educational system provides an interesting setting for exploring the outcomes of single-sex schooling. In this context, this study utilises the 2018 PISA data for Ireland to examine the relationship between single-sex education and mathematics, reading and science literacy performance for boys and girls, respectively, as well as differences across gender in these outcomes. We find significant raw gaps in reading, science and mathematics scores between females in single-sex and mixed-sex schools and in mathematics scores for males across the same school types. However, after controlling for a rich set of individual, parental and school-level factors we find that, on average, there is no significant difference in performance for girls or boys who attend single-sex schools compared to their mixed-school peers in science, mathematics or reading. In terms of heterogeneous analysis, this finding is consistent across the performance distribution.     

Identifying and investigating the “best” schools: a network-based analysis

This paper aims to provide a fresh perspective on the predominantly negative discourse on schooling quality in low-income countries by focusing on the research questions: ‘How can one identify great schools and what makes them special?’ Using a network-based perspective, I measure peer evaluations of quality in two districts in Nepal. Specifically, I ask principals to mention three schools they view as the ‘best’ schools in their district and then map the interconnections between schools as a result of this response. I additionally analyse the differentiating characteristics of these schools and qualitatively investigate the most frequently cited ‘best’ school in each district. Public school principals collectively chose a few schools as being among the ‘best’; these chosen schools had relatively higher enrolment and better student performance. The in-depth qualitative analysis highlights less quantifiable measures, such as motivated leaders who were able to help schools succeed despite difficult circumstances.     

You Must Be Present to Win

Data show that 46% of all teachers in public schools will leave the profession within their first 5 years of teaching (Ingersoll, 2003). These data refer to teachers from all disciplines including physical education. To address these problems school districts have developed teacher induction programs that show promising results. Our literature search revealed a range of teacher induction studies based on the general population of teachers, but limited information exists specific to physical education teacher induction programs. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine major issues surrounding teacher shortages and retention, to illustrate how school districts have addressed these problems through teacher induction programs, and to determine implications for the field of physical education. In addition, recommendations are provided for bridging physical education teaching licensure programs with teacher induction.     

农村学校撤并对学生上学距离的影响——基于GIS和Ordinal Logit模型的分析

农村义务教育学校布局调整是以撤并小规模学校为主要手段,旨在促进教育资源均衡配置的一项重大教育政策。通过广东省某山区县2003—2009年的学校布局规划数据,从物理距离、时间距离和文化距离的分类视角,运用GIS技术和Ordinal Logit模型分析农村学校撤并对学生上学距离产生的直接影响。研究结果表明:撤并农村学校导致学生上学的物理距离和时间距离增加,偏远学生上学难问题凸显;对学生的文化距离同样产生显著的负面影响。在未来学校布局调整的进程中,县域教育决策者应将关注点从一味追求规模效益转移到教育公平和教育质量上来。要保证农村学生就近入学,设定上学距离的限制;促进学校间教育资源的均衡配置,保证所有学生享受同等质量的教育资源;采用科学的规划程序完善布局调整政策的实施。     

Selecting and Implementing Whole School Improvement Models: A District and School Administrator Perspective

As a growing number of schools and districts are found to be underperforming under the requirements of NCLB, school and district administrators are increasingly searching for research-based whole school improvement programs, including comprehensive school reform (CSR) models and education service providers (ESPs), in order to create dramatic changes and improvements within schools. Limited available research on the effectiveness of these models constrains what education consumers know about how a model will meet the unique needs of a particular school. This article reviews the experience of practitioners who have been through the selection and implementation process of whole school improvement models in order to identify emerging themes that education consumers embarking on this process should consider. During the qualitative data collection process for three Comprehensive School Reform Quality (CSRQ) Center reports, CSRQ staff held phone conversations with school and district administrators. The researchers analyzed 86 of these conversations and grouped them into similar topic areas. Common themes emerged for both the selection process and the implementation of whole school improvement models.     

学校投入与家庭投入哪个更重要?--回应由《科尔曼报告》引起的关于学校与家庭作用之争

自《科尔曼报告》公布至今已经过去了半个世纪,但对于学生学业成绩来说,学校投入与家庭投入哪个更重要的问题在国内外学术界依然没有达成共识。本文利用我国东部和中部5省16个城市中小学校大规模测评数据,采用广义教育生产函数方法,运用两水平线性模型,分析了学校投入和家庭投入要素对教育产出(以学生学业成绩为代理变量)的影响效应。同时,采用Shapley值和Owen值分解技术,识别出对学校教育产出有较大影响的投入要素,得出以下4个方面结论:第一,除生师比之外,办学条件和教师质量等学校投入要素对教育产出结果有显著的正效应。第二,父母参与、父母教育期望等家庭投入要素对教育产出结果有显著的正效应。第三,对于小学平均学业成绩而言,来自家庭的相关投入更重要;对于初中平均学业成绩而言,则是来自学校的相关投入更为重要。第四,相比学校办学条件,教师质量对中小学校平均学业成绩变异的贡献度更大;而且,相比小学,教师质量对初中学校平均学业成绩变异的贡献度更大。基于实证研究结论,提出提高我国中小学教育生产效率的5点建议:一是调整义务教育资源配置结构,优先保障初中阶段学校教育投入;二是改善义务教育阶段教师的工资待遇和工作环境,以吸引更多高素质人才投入义务教育事业;三是通过校外教师专业发展培训、校本教研合作等途径切实提高教师队伍的教学策略水平,尤其要重视提高初中教师的教学策略水平;四是政府和相关部门应尽快出台有关家庭教育的制度规范,强化父母在家庭教育中的主体责任,督促父母积极参与子女教育生产过程;五是学校和社区应广泛开展家庭教育讲座和家庭教育实践培训活动,引导家长树立正确的家庭教育观,掌握科学的养育子女的方法,以提高学校教育和家庭教育联合生产的效率。     

The Effect of Catholic Schooling on Math and Reading Development in Kindergarten Through Fifth Grade

Abstract

Prior research estimating the effect of Catholic schooling has focused on high school, where evidence suggests a positive effect of Catholic versus public schooling. In this article, we estimate the effect of attending a Catholic elementary school rather than a public school on the math and reading skills of children in kindergarten through fifth grade. We use nationally representative data and a set of matching estimators to estimate the average effect of Catholic schooling and the extent to which the effect varies across educational markets. When we use public school students nationwide or within the same county to provide a counterfactual estimate of how Catholic school students would have performed in public schools, we find strong evidence indicating that Catholic elementary schools are less successful at teaching math skills than public schools (Catholic school students are 3–4 months behind public school students by third and fifth grade), but no more or less successful at teaching reading skills. Moreover, unlike prior research, we find no consistent evidence that the effects of Catholic schooling vary substantially by race or urbanicity, though our power to detect such differences is weak.     

Key Elements of a Successful School-Based Management Strategy

School-based management (SBM) is a standard feature of many current reforms. While previous research found that poorly designed and poorly implemented SBM had few positive effects, recent research suggests that SBM can improve instructional programs and produce higher levels of student learning. This article synthesizes research findings from major studies of SBM to identify the core elements of a successful SBM strategy. By comparing schools that successfully used SBM with schools that struggled to implement SBM, we generate 8 elements of schooling that were associated with successful SBM. In brief, these elements address vision, decision-making authority, power, knowledge and skills, information, rewards, leadership, and resources.     

School Effectiveness and School Restructuring: Contributions to Educational Improvement 1

ABSTRACT

Over the last twenty years, school effectiveness work has dominated efforts to improve schools. Within the last five years, school restructuring has moved front and center in the school improvement literature. This paper examines these two lines of improvement efforts to ascertain the major contributions of each to schooling and education. It is argued that the effective schools movement has been influential in helping dismantle the existing foundations of schooling. In particular, it is suggested that academics and practitioners working within the effective schools framework have been influential in pushing prevailing behavioral approaches to learning off center stage. Effective schools workers have also helped re‐establish the primacy of learning and teaching in schools and helped channel improvement efforts into consistent and overlapping streams of action. It is argued that school restructuring, in turn, offers the possibility of taking us considerably further ‐ of weaving seminal contributions from effective schools into dramatically different forms of schooling. In particular, it is suggested that the school restructuring movement promises viable alternatives to behaviorally‐grounded models of learning and teaching, to hierarchical models of organizing and managing education, and to bureaucratic and professionally‐dominated models of governing schools.

     

Justice for All? Suspension Bans and Restorative Justice Programs in the Los Angeles Unified School District

To address disproportionalities in suspensions for students of color, many districts have prohibited schools from suspending students for willful defiance of school authorities and implemented restorative justice programs (RJP) that address student misconduct using alternative conflict resolution practices. However, there is limited evidence on the efficacy of these new policies. This article examines how the Los Angeles Unified School District's (LAUSD) suspension ban and RJP are associated with student suspensions over time, as well as suspensions across different groups of students and schools targeted by these policies. We employ an interrupted time series design using 12 years of studentlevel administrative data from the 2003–2004 to 2014–2015 school years, which allows us to examine trends in student suspensions in LAUSD before and after its suspension ban in 2011–2012 and rollout of restorative justice practices and training to schools in 2014–2015. We find large rates of decline in suspensions in the years following LAUSD's suspension ban relative to the years leading up to the ban, as well as evidence of reduced suspension gaps between frequently disciplined students and their less-disciplined peers. Additionally, we find the district's public identification of schools most in need of continued reform, and provision of restorative justice training to these schools, is associated with further reductions in suspensions. Despite this progress, suspension gaps between black and non-black students, and between special education (SPED) and non-SPED students, still persist in our data, suggesting that districts may need more time and comprehensive strategies to fully resolve these inequities.     

Changes in Learning Environment during the Transition from Primary to Secondary School

The study used learning environment variables in investigating changes occurring as students transfer from primary to secondary school, including the role of student sex and school size pathway as influencing factors in changes in learning environment perceptions. The My Class Inventory (MCI) and Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) were used in two data-gathering stages, one in the penultimate month of primary schooling and the other in the fourth month of secondary schooling. The sample comprised 1500 students from 47 feeder primary schools and 16 linked secondary schools. The primary schools ranged from very small isolated country schools to larger city schools with hundreds of students. Five different school size transition pathways were defined for analysis: small-to-medium, medium-to-medium, small-to-large, medium-to-large and ‘within-school’ (involving schools with a K-10 structure, but with separate primary and secondary school sites within the same campus). Although the classroom climate in secondary schools was perceived more favourably than in primary schools (especially in terms of less friction and competitiveness), the quality of teacher-student interaction was perceived to deteriorate on most dimensions assessed by the QTI (e.g. a reduction in teachers' leadership, helping/friendly, understanding and student responsibility/freedom behaviours). But changes in environment perceptions across transition varied with student sex and school size pathway. For example, perceptions of class satisfaction across transition deteriorated for girls, but improved for the boys. The findings have implications for administrators and teachers, particularly those with a role within the ‘middle school’ years. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

All against all competition: the incorporation of the International Baccalaureate in public high schools in Canada

ABSTRACT

Since the 1980s, education in Canada has been through a process that led to school choice, targeting the improvement of students’ performance through school competition. These policies fostering an education quasi-market became an ideal framework for the expansion of IB schools. Since the Diploma Programme of the International Baccalaureate (IBDP) offers a differentiated international curriculum and is perceived as a program that contributes to students’ achievements, it has been increasingly adopted in school districts and schools. This paper explores the marketing strategies developed in schools and districts in response to school competition by tracing the incorporation of the IBDP in high schools in different districts in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. Based on interviews with school staff, district officials and IB local association representatives, this study analyzes schools’ marketing decisions from a consumer and producer orientation taking into account the macro environment (federal government) and micro-environment (provincial government and districts). Rather than fostering efficiency and improving students’ achievement as intended, marketization policies resulted in an increased focus on the recruitment of high achieving students, which led to a competition between schools, between districts and between other programs in the districts or in other words –an ‘all against all’ competition.