School Effectiveness (SE), as a research paradigm and, more widely, as a set of political practices in school management and development, is examined in terms of the concept of 'reductionism'. The article serves to systematise an ongoing critique of Effectiveness by Ball, Morley, Fielding, Slee, etc. Building upon studies by the biologist Steven…

School effectiveness research and school improvement research are central in this article. Based on a study of the literature, the hypothesis is put forward that merging both research traditions might be favourable to fostering the quality of education. A theoretical model is developed for School Improvement in terms of Performance Indicators…

Standardized testing is an assessment strategy that evaluates all students and all schools on the same basic skills and, therefore, might reasonably indicate which schools are high performers and which are not. Standardized testing is not a new strategy for providing this proof. The United States has produced reams of articles criticizing…

How do district policies, leadership, and support services influence the quality of teaching and learning in public schools? This article uses a rich longitudinal school-level database to estimate a model of student achievement and analyzes the residuals in the model to obtain estimates of the contributions of unobserved school and school district…

When schools fail to improve, it is because educators do not think innovatively. What they do is largely a reflection of what they grew up with or what they were taught. Rather than do new things, they focus on working harder at the things that have produced limited success. That used to be the case at Holloway High School in Murfreesboro,…

Irrespective of how the roles, tasks, and responsibilities of principals have evolved due to educational change and reform, the school principal still holds the key to achieving school effectiveness. Over the last few decades, extensive studies have been conducted on the role of the school principal. Most scholars, researchers, and school…

Research has focused on four groups of factors and the achievement gap: (1) student characteristics (high school GPA, attendance patterns, courses taken in high school, participation in extra-curricular activities, etc.); (2) family characteristics (family structure, in home, parents' level of education, mobility, etc.); (3) school-based…

Given the desperate plight of urban schooling and the disheartening track record of conventional reform, dynamic new ventures like the KIPP Academies, Edison, or Green Dot Public Schools are increasingly being asked to stand in for failing district schools. While promising, these ventures have thus far typically been characterized by "one-off"…

This study investigates whether Australian multi-campus universities are distinctive in terms of their student profile by field of education (FOE), funding and expenditure profiles, and learning and teaching outcomes, and identifies the implications for higher education policy and funding. Both parametric and non-parametric techniques are used to…

In the past, educators almost always looked for best practices in classrooms. In fact, when educators say "practice," they are generally talking about teacher practice. Yet 12 years of work at Springboard Schools (and its predecessor, the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative, or BASRC) argues that administrators, as well as teachers,…

The difficulty in education to determine causality between means and ends brings various issues and variables to the discussion about the antecedents of school effectiveness. Although teachers' level of professional development is clearly among the factors influencing student outcomes, little is known about the extent to which teachers connect…

The new independent Christian schools developed by parents and evangelical churches in the United Kingdom since the late 1960s remain controversial among both Christian and secular educators. In response to this controversy, the present study traced 106 men who had graduated from these schools between 1985 and 2003 and analysed their evaluation of…

This paper discusses research, (its process and results), on an inner city school. It highlights the methods of data collection used in the research and discusses the findings. Methods of data collection include observation, interview and documentary information. Results indicate that the school in question is making modest strides, in terms of…

This study is the fourth in a series of studies conducted by the American Association of School Administrators on the impact of the economic downturn on schools. AASA launched the series in fall 2008 in response to state budget shortfalls, federal buy-outs and interventions, and a series of additional events characterizing a slowing, stagnant…

In June 2007, the Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) was awarded a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop the College Ready School Diagnostic, a web-based diagnostic instrument. The purpose of this tool is to provide individual school profiles and customized recommendations, enabling each institution to make…