Evaluating the Impact of a Raising School Standards Initiative
Concern about the quality of schooling in disadvantaged urban areas has been especially marked throughout the United Kingdom during the 1990s. This led to the instigation of a major school improvement project in Northern Ireland, known as the Raising School Standards Initiative, that was intended to help schools address significant disadvantage and under-achievement amongst their pupils. The project, based on the knowledge base of the school effectiveness tradition, was designed to target a small number of secondary schools and their main contributory primary schools. The project sought to improve the quality of school management, the pupils’ standards of literacy and numeracy, the levels of qualifications, links with local industry, parental involvement in schools, attendance and punctuality, and to deal with problems of discipline in class. The improvement strategy selected can be seen as an attempt to integrate a ‘top down’ external approach (distal) with a ‘bottom up’ (proximal) strategy developed within individual schools. This chapter describes selected aspects of the full evaluation: the launch and selection of schools and the process of ‘action planning’. It also looks at the impact of the project on management, teaching and learning and educational standards. It concludes with findings which will have implications for other initiatives which seek to raise school standards in the urban context.
An Exploratory Analysis of the Longitudinal Impact of Principal Change on Elementary School Achievement
Recent reform initiatives, such as the Title I School Improvement Grants and Race to the Top, recommended a principal change to jump-start school turnaround. Yet, few educational researchers have examined principal change as way to improve schools in a state of systematic reform; furthermore, no large-scale quantitative study has determined the immediate or longitudinal impact of principal change on school performance. Using 9 years of school performance data, this study examined the impact of principal change on elementary schools’ scholastic achievement in reading and mathematics. Specifically, it examined whether a principal change was associated with initial improvement and longitudinal improvement of school reading and mathematics achievement. Findings suggest that principal changes did not substantially influence initial student achievement or school performance trajectory. Furthermore, these findings suggest that making a principal change does not predispose a school for improving school performance.
Measuring Added Value in Schools.
The measurement of the performance of schools is complicated by the need to adjust for difference in input mix. Even fairly refined value-added indicators may fail to take account of the fact that schools may have a differential effect on the performance of different types of pupil. Rather than a single performance indicator, a system of indicators is needed. Characteristics of a good indicator system are identified.