Research syntheses on school and instructional effectiveness

Abstract

A synthesis of hundreds of meta-analyses of many thousands of individual past research studies was used to identify instructional variables (especially curriculum and classroom environment variables) and school variables which are linked consistently with student achievement. One of the major implications emerging for school effectiveness was that no single factor alone has an enormous impact on student learning. Rather the key to improving student learning and enhancing school effectiveness lies in simultaneously optimizing several different school- alterable factors each of which bears a modest relationship to student achievement.