Educational Assessment And Evaluation School Effectiveness Accountability And International Comparisons Of Educational Achievement

Educational Accountability: International perspectives on challenges and possibilities for school leadership provides an opportunity to assess, reflect on, and discuss current issues surrounding accountability policies in education from around the globe and the implications they hold for school leadership. It addresses the global trend of accountability policies expanding in scope to include the education profession as well as the increasing incidence of international policy borrowing, brought on chiefly by globalisation. Specific case studies offer a contextual examination of the theory, policy and practice of accountability and an inspection of their influence on school leadership. Cases are intentionally juxtaposed to provide a broad perspective of regional and cultural similarities and departures, and are arranged to reflect the diasporic Chinese, Anglo, European, and Hispanic societies. Bringing together a number of highly regarded experts within the field, the book cultivates a global perspective on the challenges and possibilities for school leaders to foster school effectiveness and improvement. Educational Accountability should be key reading for researchers, policy makers, and current and future school leaders.

This report provides an international comparative analysis and policy advice to countries on how evaluation and assessment arrangements can be embedded within a consistent framework to improve the quality, equity and efficiency of school education.

One of the most salient findings from the field of education is that there are huge national differences in student achievement as shown in international comparative studies like PISA and TIMSS. The shockingly large gap between the highest performing countries (mostly in East Asia) and many European countries corresponds to a difference in attainment of two years of schooling. Although this finding has been replicated in several studies, the reasons for and consequences of such differences are currently not well understood. This book is a collection of essays and studies by leading experts in international comparative education who demonstrate how international comparative assessments can be used to evaluate educational policies. The volume is organized into two parts that address, first, theoretical foundations and methodological developments in the field of international assessments, and, second, innovative substantive studies that utilize international data for policy evaluation studies. The intention of this book is to revisit the idea of 'using the world as an educational laboratory', both to inform policy and to facilitate theory development.

This book reviews of the development, implementation and practice of the disciplines of school effectiveness and school improvement. Seven main topics are addressed: History of the school effectiveness movement over the last 25 years; Changes in accountability and standards; Leadership in school effectiveness; Changes in teacher education; Impact of Diverse Populations; Education Funding and its Impact; and Best Practice Case Studies. The contributors are active in school effectiveness research worldwide.

This book looks at the foundations of school self-evaluation from a scientific as from a practical perspective. Planning concepts, restructuring of education systems, organizational theory on schools, evaluation methodology and models of school effectiveness and school improvement are discussed as contributing to the overall conceptualization of school self-evaluation. A broad range of approaches is presented and methodological requirements are discussed. School self-evaluation contains controversial issues that reflect tension between the need for objectivity in a context that is permeated by values and potential conflicts of interests. Similar tensions may be seen to exist with respect to the static and "reductionist" aspects of available data collection procedures in a complex and dynamic situation and the appeal for external accountability on the one hand and improvement oriented self-refection on the other. The mission of the book is to clarify these tensions and offer ways to deal with them in practical applications. The school effectiveness knowledge base is offered as a substantive educational frame of references that serves an important function in selecting relevant factors for data collection and the use of the evaluation results.

Moves to develop indicators about school effectiveness and performance have been driven by national trends and debates about performance and accountability. Nationally set indicators – such as the standard assessment tasks, or the publication of performance in public examinations – have increasingly become part of the new education currency: a medium for exercising choice and decision-making in the new education market place. As contributors to this book suggest, such a framework is not unproblematic. Originally published in 1994, this book offers a number of insights into the general debate about performance indicators at the time. It explores the background to the debate; the differing perspectives of policy-makers and practitioners; and the purpose, audiences and values of education indicators, both in the UK and elsewhere.

What are students learning? Throughout the world, governments striving to improve educational quality are turning to national assessments to provide this much-needed information in key curriculum areas. The capacity for carrying out national assessments has grown remarkably in recent years, but it has not been matched by widespread use of their findings. This book seeks to maximize an appreciation for the value of such data and to assist countries in exploiting the knowledge that national assessments yield. Using the Results of a National Assessment of Educational Achievement identifies the main factors affecting the use of national assessment findings. These include the political context in which an assessment is carried out, the nature of the assessment (census based or sample based), the assignment of accountability for the results, and the quality of assessment instruments. The book describes the type of information that the main report of a national assessment should contain, as well as other means of communicating findings to technical and nontechnical audiences. It outlines general considerations in translating national assessment results into policy and action, and examines specific procedures for using the data in policy making, educational management, teaching, and promoting public awareness. The topics addressed in this volume should be of interest to policy makers, educators, researchers, and development practitioners.

Test-based accountability systems that attach high stakes to standardized test results have raised a number of issues on educational assessment and accountability. Do these high-stakes tests measure student achievement accurately? How can policymakers and educators attach the right consequences to the results of these tests? And what kinds of tradeoffs do these testing policies introduce? This book responds to the growing emphasis on high-stakes testing and offers recommendations for more-effective test-based accountability systems.