This document is part of a series of guides designed to help school district leaders address one of the toughest challenges in American education: dropout rates of 30 percent nationwide, 50 percent in many big cities, and 60 percent or more in the lowest-performing schools. This second guide in the series offers a detailed examination of the six…

Evaluative statements from alumni have legitimacy with both internal and external stakeholders. Thus, alumni studies can provide valuable evidence of institutional effectiveness and lend themselves to both locally designed and commercial survey instruments for data collection. Under ideal conditions, the results of alumni studies equip faculty and…

Purpose: This paper aims to provide an overview of the literature concerning distributed leadership and organisational change. The main purpose of the paper is to consider the empirical evidence that highlights a relationship between distributed leadership and organisational outcomes. Design/methodological approach: The paper draws on several…

The objective of this study was to advance our understanding of educational effectiveness processes within contexts where they have seldom been studied before: rural and urban areas in China. Utilizing a "contextually sensitive" school effectiveness research design, we collected classroom observation data to address our research…

The authors describe a reform effort in which characteristics derived from High Reliability Organization research were used to shape whole school reform. Longitudinal analyses of outcome data from 12 Welsh secondary schools indicated that 4 years after the effort was initiated, student outcomes at the sites were strongly positive. Additional…

This article presents the results of an evaluation study in Physical Education (PE) in which 23 schools, 49 classes and 1142 year 4 Cypriot students participated. This study attempted to identify the extent to which a theoretical framework of educational effectiveness research based on Creemers' model can be developed. The relationship between…

This paper presents an overview of studies into effects and side effects of control mechanisms in education. We focus on effects and side effects of inspection visits and public performance indicators. A first conclusion is that the studies do not provide us with a clear answer to the question of whether inspections have positive causal effects on…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse and evaluate Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) reports on attendance issues within local education authorities' out-of-school provision. Design/methodology/approach: A full cohort of Ofsted reports on inspections of out-of-school units, often known as pupil referral units (PRUs), undertaken…

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological multi-case study was to explore the leadership practices related to governance issues experienced by executive directors in selected Illinois special education cooperatives. These leadership practices were generally defined as responses to governance issues and challenges. The study examined five…

How does an assistant principal complete the large number of managerial duties and, at the same time, serve as a credible instructional leader? This book provides practical recommendations for successfully filling the dual role as manager and instructional leader, building effective relationships, using power appropriately, and productively…

What makes a test score? There is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the exact contribution of school quality, pupil background, and peers in educational achievement. If peers make most of the difference, then diversity and heterogeneous classrooms may narrow the gap between high- and low-performing students. If pupil background is the first…

Public schools are experiencing a new era of assessment and evaluation with the implementation of state accountability systems and No Child Left Behind. How can Catholic schools respond by recognizing the legitimacy of evaluation and assessment, while also critically examining its appropriateness? To help address this question, this article…

The present state of adult education is perilous, as all readers of "Adults Learning" will know well. All sectors are damagingly affected by funding decisions, as witnessed by the large numbers of organisations and providers represented at the recent Parliamentary lobby by the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning (CALL). The damage…

Nonrandom assignment of students to teachers can bias value-added estimates of teachers' causal effects. Rothstein (2008, 2010) shows that typical value-added models indicate large counterfactual effects of fifth-grade teachers on students' fourth-grade learning, indicating that classroom assignments are far from random. This article quantifies…

In this essay, Charles Payne and Tim Knowles argue that given President Obama's support of charter schools, it is time for educators and policymakers to closely consider both the possibilities and the limitations of these schools in the context of urban school reform. The authors discuss the unique flexibility of charter schools--namely in…