Evaluating School Effectiveness and School Improvement: The Impact of Change on School Performance Professor Tony Townsend Chair of Public Service, Educational Leadership and Management Department of Educational Studies, University of Glasgow Masaryk University, Brno May 9, 2010
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Evaluating School Effectiveness and School Improvement: The Impact of Change on School Performance
Masaryk University, Brno May 9, 2010. Evaluating School Effectiveness and School Improvement: The Impact of Change on School Performance. Professor Tony Townsend Chair of Public Service, Educational Leadership and Management Department of Educational Studies, University of Glasgow. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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Evaluating School Effectiveness and School Improvement: The Impact of Change on School
Performance
Professor Tony TownsendChair of Public Service, Educational
Leadership and Management
Department of Educational Studies,
University of Glasgow
Masaryk University, Brno May 9, 2010
PerceptionOur view of the world is a product of what we are looking at, where we are standing when we are looking at it and how we feel about ourselves and the thing we are looking at.
We can, however, change people’s perceptions of the world by providing them with new information, by educating them.
Every few hundred years in western history there occurs a sharp transformation. We cross... a divide. Within a few short decades society rearranges itself, its world view; its basic values; its social and political structure; its arts; its key institutions. Fifty years later, there appears a new world...we are currently living through such a transformation.
Drucker, 1993: p 1
Toffler, 1971: 12
I coined the term ‘future shock’ to describe the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.
THE PACE AND FLOW OF CHANGE
Peter Drucker
People born in the 1980s and 1990s cannot even imagine the world into which their parents were born.
• Classroom effectiveness – improving student achievement through learning and teaching
• School effectiveness – establishing processes that focus on student learning
• School improvement – the attempts by local education authorities to improve effectiveness across schools
• School reform – restructuring the school system to bring about large scale change
Educational Effectiveness Research
Sets out to answer the questions:
• What makes a ‘good’ school?
• How do we make more schools ‘good’?
Reynolds et al (2011)
• looks at all the factors within schools in particular, and the educational system in general, that might affect the learning outcomes of students in their academic and social development, which means it encompasses a wide range of factors such as teaching methods, the organisation - formally and informally - of schools, the curriculum and the effects of educational ‘learning environments’ in general.
What is an effective school?
• What criteria would you use to judge whether a school is effective or not?
• List five characteristics that an effective school would have that a less effective school would not
• Choose the two you think are the most important
Coleman et al., 1966:325
Schools bring little influence to bear on a child's achievement that is independent of his background and general social context... this very lack of an independent effect means that the inequalities imposed on children by their home, neighbourhood and peer environment are carried along to become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at the end of school. For equality of educational opportunity must imply a strong effect of schools that is independent of the child's immediate environment, and that strong independence is not present in American schools.
Rutter et al, 1979:1
• do a child's experiences at school have any effect?
• does it matter which school he goes to?
• which are the features of school that matter?
Madaus et al, 1980:22
an effective school can be defined as such...
‘to the extent that there is congruence between its objectives and achievements. In other words it is effective to the extent that it accomplishes what it sets out to do’
Edmonds, 1978:3
I define an effective school as being instructionally successful for all children excepting those of certifiable physical, emotional or mental handicap. Specifically, I require that an effective school bring the children of the poor to those minimal masteries of basic school skills that now describe minimally successful pupil performances for the children of the middle class.
Rosander, 1984:1
Effective schools are those in which all students master basic skills, seek academic excellence in all subjects, and demonstrate achievement through systematic testing. As a result of improved academic achievement, students in effective schools display improved behaviour and attendance.
Lezotte, 1989:6
Conceptually, an effective school can be defined as one that can, in outcome terms reflective of its teaching for learning mission, demonstrate the joint presence of quality (acceptably high levels of achievement) and equity (no differences in the distribution of that achievement) among the major subsets of the student population.
Possible Goals for Effective Schools (Townsend, 1994)
• Literacy• Numeracy• Other Academic Goals (eg science, history)• Behaviour• Attendance• Self-concept• Citizenship• Employment• Other Educational Goals (eg values, attitudes)• Community Goals (eg involvement, safety)
Townsend, 1994: 37
Possible goals for schools
L N OA B A SC C E OE Com
Mortimore et al, 1988: 176
The study of fifty English junior schools, sought to ‘find a way of comparing schools' effects on their pupils, while acknowledging the fact that schools do not all receive pupils of similar abilities and backgrounds’.
Banks, 1993: 2
With value-adding effectiveness...the distance between the most and the least advantaged remains the same.
For mediating effectiveness... the distance between the most and the least advantaged becomes less.
Value Adding
Mediating
Value Added and Mediating Effectiveness
Townsend, 1994: 46
Techniques for measuring effective schools
OUTCOME BASIS
VALUE-ADDED BASIS
Townsend, 1994: 42
Techniques for identifying effective schools
STANDARDISED TESTING
REPUTATIONAL APPROACH
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
SCHOOL REVIEW AND EVALUATION
Townsend, 1994: 47
Model for recognising effective schools
L N OA B A SC C E OE Com
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
SCHOOL REVIEW AND EVALUATION
REPUTATIONAL APPROACH
STANDARDISED TESTING
VALUE
A
D
DED
OU
TCOM
ES
Townsend, 1994:48
An effective school is one that develops and maintains a high quality educational programme designed to achieve both system-wide and locally identified goals. All students, regardless of their family or social background, experience both improvement across their school career and ultimate success in the achievement of those goals, based on appropriate external and school-based measuring techniques.