Improving teaching capacity to increase student achievement: The key role of data interpretation by school leaders
Purpose This paper argues that in a well organised school with strong leadership and vision coupled with a concerted effort to improve the teaching performance of each teacher, student achievement can be enhanced. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that while macro effect sizes such as "whole of school" metrics are useful for school leaders in their professional development roles, there are important micro conditions that can be uncovered in a more detailed analysis of student achievement data. Design/methodology/approach Evidence of student achievement in a variety of standardised and non standardised assessment tasks was subjected to examination in a post hoc, case study design. The assessment tasks were the South Australian Spelling Test Waddington Reading Test, a school wide diagnostic writing task, teacher running records and National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy. Performance in selected classrooms was compared on these tests utilising a variety of parametric quantitative.