The Stability of School Effectiveness Indices Across Grade Levels and Subject Areas

School effectiveness indices (SEIs) based on regressing achievement test performance onto earlier test performance and a socioeconomic status (SES) measure were obtained for eight subject–grade level combinations for a large sample of elementary schools. School means based on longitudinally matched student scores comprised the data set used in the analysis. The resulting SEIs were found to be somewhat unstable across subject areas (reading and mathematics) and very unstable across grade levels (1 through 4). Grade-to-grade correlations of the SEIs measuring mathematics performance, although small, tended to be statistically significant, whereas those measuring reading performance were generally nonsignificant. Thus, school effects may be more readily discernible in some subject areas than in others. Implications for research on effective schools and for the design of school recognition programs based on student test performance are discussed.     

School Effects Indices: Stability of One- and Two-Level Formulations

Three residual-based methods for indexing school effectiveness were compared using data from elementary schools in Maryland. Two of the methods were regression-based procedures at the school level, and 1 was a hierarchical linear model approach, with Level 1 at the student level and Level 2 at the school level. The 2 methods were applied to a data source in which schools were evaluated separately at Grades 3 and 5 using 3 forms of a statewide performance assessment that were administered to randomly formed groups within each school. The hierarchical linear model approach had higher stability across test forms, but the stabilities of the 1-level formulations were almost as high. The authors concluded that 1-level approaches are viable alternatives when the added data necessary for the hierarchical linear model approach are unavailable.     

Achievement Measures of School Effectiveness: Comparison of Model Stability Across Years

The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of combining different test types (criterion-referenced and norm-referenced) in a composite school achievement score to be used in a model for school effectiveness classification. The cross-year stability and within-model consistency of the composite was compared to models using subcomposite, overall scores for both the criterion- referenced and norm-referenced tests, subject-area scores (across grades), grade-level scores, and component scores for each grade. Stability of the different models across 2 years was determined by using the agreement ratio, kappa coefficient, and correlation of residuals (N = 361). The same statistical procedures were used to compute consistency across subsamples (N = 264). Results indicated that transforming and combining student-level scores of different test types, grade levels, and subject areas allows for a broader basis for judging schools and provides a school effectiveness model that is both consistent across subsamples and stable across years.     

New Directions for School Effectiveness Research: Towards School Effectiveness Without Schools

School effectiveness research has made a number of valuable contributions to educational research over the past three decades. However, its validity is threatened by a number of evolutions that question the continuing centrality of its basic research object, the public school. Moves towards more flexible school organization such as networks of schools, a broader role for schools reconceptualized as community centers, the emergence of new providers outwith the public sector, the increasingly internationalised nature of research and moves towards greater use of distance learning and home schooling all mean that this focus may rapidly become outdated, potentially making school effectiveness research irrelevant.In this paper we will discuss the consequences of these evolutions for school effectiveness research and argue that, rather than lessening the need for effectiveness research, they increase the imperative for this type of research, as long as it is broadened to educational effectiveness in its broadest sense whether it takes place in the traditional public school or not, and is conducted in an empirical and open-minded way.     

School Effectiveness and School Improvement: Sustaining Links

Ideally, school effectiveness research and school improvement might have a relationship with a surplus value for both. In reality, this relationship is often troublesome. Some problems can be attributed to the intrinsic differences between effectiveness and improvement, such as different missions. However, an analysis of the current situation in effectiveness and improvement shows that there are many possibilities at all stages of research studies and improvement projects for a more fruitful relationship. In this article, stronger links between effectiveness and improvement are advocated. Such links can be achieved by better‐guided processes of application and reconstruction of knowledge during effectiveness research and improvement. These processes, illustrated by some successful projects which have started recently, are described under the heading of sustained interactivity.     

School Effectiveness and Effectiveness Indicators

In spite of continuing investigations, researchers have yet to satisfy practitioners, policy‐makers and the international research community about production of a defensible collection of important indicators for gauging school effectiveness. The research project described in this article had four major purposes: (a) to investigate and compare the perceptions of principals, teachers and area superintendents about the overall effectiveness of schools and effectiveness on specific dimensions; (b) to assess and compare the perceptions of these educators about the importance of the specific dimensions for overall effectiveness; (c) to assess the association between principals’ perceptions of effectiveness on, and importance, of these dimensions; and (d) to probe school‐level differences about the two types of organizations. Perceptual data were obtained from elementary and junior high school principals throughout Alberta, Canada, as well as from teachers and area superintendents in one major city. Schools were rated as most effective in maintaining an appropriate school climate, while the most important dimensions involved climate (elementary), and morale, climate and acknowledging achievements (junior high). Factor analysis produced eight underlying indicators, but it also demonstrated the complexity of the effectiveness construct. Comparisons of effectiveness and importance highlighted some important but least effective areas, such as encouraging academic success and maximizing staff satisfaction. Practical and research implications are elucidated.     

Some Guidelines for School Consultants Revisited

The value and relevance of Alpert's (1977) guidelines for school consultants are reconsidered after 1 1/2 decades of significant societal changes that have resulted in calls for educational reform and restructuring. The debate over the Regular Education Initiative-its underlying assumptions, its proposed methods, and aims-is discussed as an illustration of the necessity for an informed and realistic approach to planned change. Recent additions to the literature on planned change are considered, particularly those pertaining to specific methods and strategies necessary for successful implementation. The importance of institutionalization as the terminal stage of a planned change is also discussed. Finally, the potential impact of the educational reform movement on the role of the school psychologist is addressed.     

School Effectiveness and School Attendance

ABSTRACT

Given that the British Government is proposing to require all schools to provide the Secretary of State with details of, amongst other things, their respective truancy rates, this article sets out to demonstrate that attendance figures, as well as examination results, should be modified before publication. It reports on a study involving 5,429 pupils in their final year of primary education attending 138 junior/primary schools in a single authority in Wales and utilises child, home and school data.     

Redefining School Effectiveness

This article examines some of the effects of the focus of school effectiveness research on the single variable of examination success. It considers the English political context within which the use of this indicator has developed and argues that such a focus has caused considerable harm. Finally, it emphasises the need for researchers to develop and use a greater variety of measures of school effectiveness.     

学校效能:职业学校评价的新视角

对学校效能理论的起源及发展,学校效能的内涵、特征及功能等问题进行梳理,在此基础上提出以学校效能理论为基础,构建职校效能理论,评价职业学校效能的观点。认为将学校效能理论应用于职业学校评价,研究职业学校教育净影响所产生的增值情况,对于科学分析、评价职业学校具有重要意义。     

学校效能研究与学校重建

追求学校教育质量与效能是当今世界各国基础教育改革的核心要旨.学校效能研究从揭示学校对学生的成就影响开始,其间经历有效学校运动到学校改进运动,其目的是改进学校,使学校成为有效能的学校.学校效能研究在40年的发展过程中在方法论上不断革新,试图揭示学校效能的因素,在实践层面为政府以及学校重建提供理论指引;同时学校效能研究面临着政治化、专门化和技术化问题,问题的解决有待于研究的进一步深化.     

School Culture,School Effectiveness and School Improvement

The relevance of the concept of culture to school effectiveness and school improvement is explored. Two typologies are developed. The first proposes four ‘ideal type’ school cultures, based on two underlying domains; the second, a more elaborate and dynamic model, proposes two ‘ideal type’ school cultures, based on five underlying structures. Each is discussed for its heuristic, conceptual, methodological and explanatory potential in research in the fields of school effectiveness and school improvement. In distinguishing collegial cultures from collaborative styles, the article advances recent writing on collaboration. From the theory hypotheses about the relationship between school culture and school effectiveness and improvement can be derived as well as techniques to test such hypotheses.     

Accelerated School Programmes: Assessing Their Effectiveness

Accelerated School Programmes (ASPs) apply three principles designed to raise schools' effectiveness and to narrow the gap between low-achieving and high achieving students. These principles are: (1) giving the school a unifying purpose or vision; (2) allowing the school greater autonomy in its own management; (3) developing a collaborative approach to teaching, involving teachers, students, parents and the community. This article examines the effectiveness of ASPs on the basis of a study of four comprehensive schools in Israel. While the size of the sample is small, the positive results indicate that similar research on a wider scale would be valuable in shaping future educational policy.     

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.

     

Contextual Influences on School Effectiveness: The Role of School Boards

The purpose of this research project is to investigate if characteristics of school boards and their administrative control do explain variance among schools in pupil achievement in the cognitive domain. A combination of findings of research on school effectiveness and organizational effectiveness, gives the ground for the framework of school boards’ administrative control used in this study. A random sample of 133 school boards and one specific primary school, selected out of the total number of schools they oversee, was drawn. The findings show that characteristics of school boards do explain variance in cognitive achievement. Even after controlling for student background and school characteristics, school boards do make a difference. School boards that involve school team and parents (committee) in their decision‐making process manage schools with relatively better results in the cognitive domain.     

Linking School Effectiveness Knowledge and School Improvement Practice: Towards a Synergy

A survey is undertaken of the ‘paradigms’ of the academic communities of school effectiveness and school improvement researchers, practitioners and scholars. It is argued that the two ‘paradigms’ are very different, and that this has hindered the improvement of educational practice. Examples are given of programmes which are a ‘blend’ of the two different approaches, and detail is given as to how the school effectiveness and school improvement communities can meet the knowledge needs necessary for improving the quality of schooling.