The Role of Large-Scale Assessments in Research on Educational Effectiveness and School Development

Abstract

Policy makers are mainly interested in large-scale assessments as indicators that monitor the functioning, productivity, and equity of educational systems, while researchers tend to perceive large-scale assessments as a kind of multigroup (i.e., multicountry) educational effectiveness study. Aside from describing strengths and challenges with regard to student performance and the conditions of teaching and schooling in participating countries, researchers also want to understand why students achieve certain levels of performance. But because large-scale assessments provide only observational data, it is exceedingly difficult to draw causal inferences, such as concluding that a particular educational policy or practice has a direct or indirect impact on student performance. A productive interplay between large-scale assessments and effectiveness research may be established in several ways by implementing enhancements to the assessment design. Two examples of such enhancements will be presented and discussed: (1) a national large-scale assessment on language competencies in Germany reassessed students one year after the first large-scale assessment, allowing researchers to study the impact of school-level factors on classroom instruction and student growth; and (2) a reassessment of Germany’s schools performed nine years after initial participation in PISA.