The Practical Relevance of Accountability Systems for School Improvement: A Descriptive Analysis of California Schools

2007 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heinrich Mintrop ◽  
Tina Trujillo
Keyword(s):  
School Improvement ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
High Growth ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
Accountability Systems ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Low Performing Schools ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
California Schools

In search for the practical relevance of accountability systems for school improvement, the authors ask whether practitioners traveling between the worlds of system-designated high- and low-performing schools would detect tangible differences in educational quality and organizational effectiveness. In comparing nine exceptionally high and low performing California middle schools, the authors conclude that if such travelers expected to encounter visible signs of an overall higher quality of students’ educational experience at the high-performing schools, they would be disappointed. Rather, they would have to settle on a narrower definition of quality that is more proximate to the effective acquisition of standards-aligned and test-relevant knowledge. High-growth schools tended to generate internal commitment for accountability and consider it an impetus for raising standards.

scholarly journals Soft Skills of Leaders and School Improvement in High Performing Schools

2015 ◽  
Vol 191 ◽  
pp. 2127-2131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tang Keow Ngang ◽  
Siti Huwaina Mohamed ◽  
Somprach Kanokorn
Keyword(s):  
School Improvement ◽  
Soft Skills ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
High Performing

scholarly journals Exploring Traits of High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 33-40
Author(s):  
Jerilou J. Moore ◽  
Aubrey Womack ◽  
P. Renee Hill-Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
Constant Pressure ◽  
Common Factors ◽  
High Poverty ◽  
High Poverty Schools ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Low Performing Schools ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Common

Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in pressure placed on schools across the nation due to high-stakes accountability policies (Klar, 2014). It comes as no surprise that low performing schools feel constant pressure to raise the measured academic performance of all students. Rarely, do low-performing schools who have overcome challenging circumstances in order to increase academic achievement, get spotlighted. Educators need to identify the common factors attributed to increased student achievement. This can be achieved by examining the lessons and examples of high-performing schools so that all schools can succeed regardless of circumstances.

The emotional ecology of school improvement culture

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (5) ◽  
pp. 488-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Demerath
Keyword(s):  
School Culture ◽  
School Improvement ◽  
Collective Efficacy ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
Feedback Loops ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
Content Type ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Staff Members

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand how high-performing schools develop and sustain improvement culture. While school culture has consistently been identified as an essential feature of high-performing schools, many of the ways in which culture shapes specific improvement efforts remain unclear. The paper draws on new research from social cognitive neuroscience and the anthropology and sociology of emotion to account for the relative impact of various meanings within school culture and how school commitment is enacted. Design/methodology/approach The analysis here draws on three years of ethnographic data collected in Harrison High School (HHS) in an urban public school district in River City, a large metropolitan area in the Midwestern USA. Though the school’s surrounding community had been socioeconomically depressed for many years, Harrison was selected for the study largely because of its steady improvement trajectory: in December, 2013, it was deemed a “Celebration” school under the state’s Multiple Measurement Rating system. The paper focuses on a period of time between 2013 and 2015, when the school was struggling to implement and localize a district-mandated push-in inclusion policy. Findings Study data suggest that the school’s eventual success in localizing the new inclusion policy was due in large part to a set of core interlocking feedback loops that generated specific emotionally charged meanings which guided its priorities, practices and direction. Specifically, the feedback loops explain how staff members and leaders generated and sustained empathy for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, optimism in their capabilities and motivation to help them learn and flourish. Furthermore they show how school leaders and staff members generated and sustained confidence and trust in their colleagues’ abilities to collaboratively learn and solve problems. Originality/value The model of the school’s emotional ecology presented here connects two domains of educational practice that are frequently analyzed separately: teaching and learning, and organization and leadership. The paper shows how several key features of high-performing schools are actually made and re-made through the everyday practices of leaders and staff members, including relational trust, academic optimism and collective efficacy. In sum, the charged meanings described here contributed to leaders’ and staff members’ commitment to the school, its students and each other – and what Florek (2016) has referred to as their “common moral purpose.”

Leadership practices of principals of high-performing community high schools: Evidence from Nepal

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (6) ◽  
pp. 1026-1045
Author(s):  
Jeevan Khanal ◽  
Freya Perry ◽  
Sae-Hoon Park
Keyword(s):  
High Schools ◽  
School Leadership ◽  
Leadership Practices ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Quality Teachers ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Low Performing Schools ◽  
Short Period

Empirical studies of school leadership in South Asia are limited. This qualitative study examines the ways in which principals in three award-winning community high schools enact leadership practices in their specific contexts in Nepal. The results reveal that the principals used multiple frames of leadership and were proactive towards reforms. High levels of interest, collaboration, prohibition of political activities inside the school, approachability for parents, recruitment of high-quality teachers and innovative programmes proved to be critical for success. This study has implications for how principals enact their role to transform low-performing schools into high-performing schools within a short period.

scholarly journals How do Principals of High Performing Schools Achieve Sustained Improvement Results?

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 133-149
Author(s):  
Lewes Peddell ◽  
David Lynch ◽  
Richard Waters ◽  
Wendy Boyd ◽  
Royce Willis
Keyword(s):  
School Improvement ◽  
Shared Vision ◽  
Effective School ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Foundational Principle ◽  
High Achieving Schools ◽  
Ace Model ◽  
Improvement Programs

Education systems across the globe have enacted national testing regimes to monitor and report student achievement progress as an outcome of teaching performance. This paper reports on an investigation of strategies that Principals of high achieving schools use to achieve school results, based on NAPLAN reports (the National Assessment Program in Australia) and interpreted via the Alignment, Capability and Engagement (ACE) model of organisational readiness. Our findings identified specific Principal behaviours, actions and attitudes as necessary for effective school-wide improvement programs, as well as the existence of commonly shared strategies and approaches that help to explain why these particular Principals have been successful in their pursuit of school improvement. These include a shared vision for improvement, use of data-driven decision making, and building positive, “transparent” relationships to encourage teacher buy-in. Importantly, these findings identified “organisational readiness”, a foundational principle of the ACE model, as a fundamental requisite to effective school improvement.

scholarly journals Contextualizing Educational Disparities and the Evaluation of Teacher Quality

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dara Shifrer
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Quality ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Urban District ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Low Performing Schools ◽  
Statistical Estimates ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Value added scores, statistical estimates of teacher quality, are representative of neoliberal logic. The higher average scores of teachers of socially advantaged students raise concerns that scores are inaccurate and unfair, and propagate decontextualized neoliberal understandings of the nature of learning and teachers’ work. This study uses longitudinal data from roughly 4,500 teachers in a large urban district between 2007–08 through 2012–13 to follow individual teachers as they switch into schools of different “performance levels” over time. Fixed-intercept models tracking individual teachers between 2007–08 and 2012–13 showed scores increased for teachers who switched into high-performing schools and decreased for teachers who switched into low-performing schools. Particularly indicative of scores biased by contextual factors outside teachers’ control, score changes for mobile teachers are partially attributable to shifts in the economic status and race of students in teachers’ classrooms and schools. Understanding how neoliberalism operates within education provides sociological insight into how neoliberalism is legitimated and perpetuated in other central social institutions, such as the criminal justice system, the environment, gender, sexuality, and health.

Can schools meet the promise of continuous improvement?

2017 ◽  
Vol 99 (4) ◽  
pp. 54-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Elgart
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
School Improvement ◽  
Continuous Improvement ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
High Performing Schools ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Implementation Capacity ◽  
Real Progress ◽  
Strong Relationships

Continuous improvement is “an embedded behavior within the culture of a school that constantly focuses on the conditions, processes, and practices that will improve teaching and learning.” The phrase has been part of the lexicon of school improvement for decades, but real progress is rare. Based on its observations of about 5,000 institutions a year, AdvancEd Improvement Network has found that there are strong relationships between effective continuous improvement practices and the following characteristics of high-performing schools: a clear direction, healthy culture, high expectations, impact of instruction, resource management, efficacy of engagement, and implementation capacity.

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