Measures Of School Performance Research Articles

Neighborhood effects on secondary school performance of Latino and African American youth: Evidence from a natural experiment in Denver

We quantify the relationships between measures of neighborhood context and school performance (repeating a grade, grade point average and dropping out before a diploma is earned) for low-income Latino and African American adolescents ages 12–18. We employ administrative and survey data from a natural experiment involving the Denver Housing Authority's public housing program to minimize geographic selection bias and provide wide variation in neighborhood contexts. We use characteristics of the neighborhood initially offered by DHA to waiting list applicants as identifying instruments for the neighborhood context experienced as an adolescent. Cox proportional hazard models (OLS in the case of grades) demonstrate that neighborhoods having less social vulnerability, higher occupational prestige and lower percentages of African American residents robustly predict superior secondary educational performance in one or more dimensions, though magnitudes are typically contingent on ethnicity.

The Association Between Premedical Curricular and Admission Requirements and Medical School Performance and Residency Placement

The curricular elements of undergraduate premedical education are the subject of an ongoing debate. The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University (AMS) matriculates students via the traditional premedical route (TPM) and an eight-year baccalaureate/MD program-the Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME)-which provides students with a broad and liberal education. Using the juxtaposition of these two admission routes, the authors aimed to determine whether there is an association between highly distinct premedical curricular and admission requirements and medical school performance and residency placement. The cohorts studied included all of the PLME (n = 295) and TPM (n = 215) students who graduated from the AMS between 2010 and 2015. Outcome variables consisted of multiple measures of medical school performance, including standardized multiple-choice examination scores and honors grades, and residency placement. The authors employed unadjusted tests of averages and proportions (independent t tests and chi-square tests) to compare variables. The TPM students attained marginally, but statistically significantly, higher average scores on standardized multiple-choice examinations than their PLME counterparts. The number of undergraduate premedical science courses completed by PLME students accounted for less than 4% of the variance in key metrics of medical school performance. The residency placement record of the PLME and TPM cohorts proved comparable. These findings suggest that the association between medical school performance and residency placement and undergraduate premedical curricular and admission requirements is weak. Further study is needed to determine the optimal premedical preparation of students.

Over de validiteit van indicatoren voor schooleffectiviteit

Abstract On the validity of school performance indicators School performance indicators are generally considered to be important elements in programs for school improvement and external accountability. In this article five indicators are described, of varying origin. Three are in use by the Dutch Inspectorate of Education, while the other two are used mainly for research purposes; four are based on a value-added approach, one on school mean proficiency. The indicators are compared against a frame of six validity criteria, including for instance measurement precision and topicality. It is concluded that all five indicators show shortcomings, be it in varying degree. In the discussion three factors are explored that hamper the measurement of school performance in terms of learning outcomes. Better understanding of school performance indicators requires insight into the process variables that distinguish effective schools from less effective schools. The stronger process variables like teacher qualities and effective learning time are related to school performance indicators, the more valid these indicators are to be considered.

School output control and student performance in Norwegian primary schools—an exploratory study

This paper explores how national school performance measures are used as a management control system in Norwegian schools and the relationship between the use of these measures and student performance. Survey data from Norway and archival family background data are examined with the results of national tests (NTs) taken by grade 5 students (10 year olds). The study finds interesting relationships between how schools use NT results and student performance. The findings provide insight into how take up of national tests can be improved within Norwegian schools. These insights might also be transferable to schools outside Norway.

Evolving data use policy in Trinidad and Tobago: the search for actionable knowledge on educational improvement in a small island developing state

This paper presents a single-country case study of the use of large scale assessment (LSA) data to generate actionable knowledge at school and system levels. Actionable knowledge is data-informed insight into school and system processes that can be used to direct corrective action. The analysis is framed from the perspective of the country’s evolving national policy on data use for educational improvement between 1990 and 2013. Trinidad and Tobago first participated in international large scale assessments (ILSAs) in 1991 but also developed a centralized system of national large scale assessments (NLSAs) in 2004. Analyses of both datasets consistently pointed to low quality and high inequality as the main actionable issues in the education system. NLSA data also hinted at notable variation in performance across schools and education districts. Analyses for and of policy point to the need for multiple school performance measures to better inform site-based, formative action. Over the period, actionable knowledge appears to have had greater impact at school level, with evidence being used by some low-performing schools to improve. However, at the system level, the frequent non-use and misuse of actionable knowledge suggest the need to promote and strengthen structures and processes related to evidence-informed policy-making.

Exercising a bounded autonomy: novice and experienced teachers’ adaptations to curriculum materials in an age of accountability

This study explores teachers’ first enactments of a set of theory-based curriculum materials designed to support academic language instruction. Specifically, this multiple case study looks at how six middle school English teachers in three US schools adapted the materials; each case includes a pair of teachers, one novice and one more experienced. All schools were located in the same district where a school performance measurement system was being used to publicly rank schools’ academic performance and growth. Multiple measures were used to look for evidence of adaptations and why teachers made adaptations. We found that all teachers adapted the curriculum, most often in response to either perceived student needs or district reform pressures. In two cases, patterns of adaptation differed by teacher experience; experienced teachers appeared better able to adapt curriculum materials to meet instructional goals. This pattern did not hold up at the third school, where teachers faced greater reform pressures. Taken together, these findings suggest that researchers should pay more attention to the role of school and district policy on teachers’ enactments of theory-based reforms. We conclude with guidance to researchers, instructional leaders and others interested in the potential of theory-based curricula as a lever for improving classroom instruction.

School accountability: can we reward schools and avoid pupil selection?

School accountability schemes require measures of school performance, and these measures are in practice often based on pupil test scores. It is well-known that insufficiently correcting these test scores for pupil characteristics may provide incentives for pupil selection. Building further on results from the theory of fair allocation, we show that the trade-off between reward and pupil selection is not only a matter of sufficient information. A school accountability scheme that rewards school performance will create incentives for pupil selection, even under perfect information, unless the educational production function satisfies an (unrealistic) separability assumption. We propose different compromise solutions and discuss the resulting incentives in theory. The empirical relevance of our analysis—i.e., the rejection of the separability assumption and the magnitude of the incentives in the different compromise solutions—is illustrated with Flemish data. The traditional value-added model turns out to be an acceptable compromise.

Educational effectiveness in Chilean secondary education: comparing different ‘value added’ approaches to evaluate schools

This article reports an original investigation into school performance measures and the multilevel nature of pupil achievement data in the Chilean school system using a sample of 177,461 students, nested within 7146 classrooms, 2283 secondary schools and 313 municipalities. The data-set comprised Year 10 students’ 2006 SIMCE test’s results in two subject outcomes (language and maths) matched to their prior attainment in grade 8 and family characteristics. The analyses showed the lack of precision of two-level models to draw conclusions regarding the effectiveness of Chilean secondary schools as well as the extent to which different pupil intake, background and context features of Chilean secondary schools influence students’ performance. The results show substantial and statistically significant municipal, school and classroom effects in Chile, and how the estimation of school effects changes according to the explanatory variables controlled for in the analysis and the outcome analysed. These results are compared with similar studies carried out in Latin America, as well as in other countries (England and China), in order to situate the findings in the broader knowledge base of Educational Assessment and Effectiveness Research.

Can improvements in schools spur neighborhood revitalization? Evidence from building investments

For most households in the U.S. the public school to which they send their children is tied to the geographic location of their home. Economic theory predicts that households take into account the quality of the public school when making residential decisions. A large body of literature has documented that school quality alters the demand for housing in a neighborhood as measured by the capitalization of school quality into house prices. Demand for schools may also affect the quality of the housing stock by creating incentives for property owners to better maintain their buildings and units. Exploration of this potential relationship has been absent from the discussion on how schools influence communities. I attempt to fill this gap through investigating the relationship between school quality and capital investments in the housing stock. To investigate whether a relationship exists between schools and property owner capital investment activity, I rely on detailed building level investment data in New York City as well as measures of school performance. I explore whether consistent measures of school performance are associated with higher levels of investment activity. To identify whether this relationship is causal, that good schools can spur investment activity, I incorporate a boundary discontinuity identification strategy. Further, I test whether households respond to changes in school performance, exploring whether improvements in test scores over a five-year period are associated with higher levels of residential investments. Finally, I control for differences in populations across attendance zone boundaries through incorporating information on the composition of students at each school. My results suggest a significant relationship between performance in math and English Language Arts and property owner capital investment behavior. In my preferred specification, I estimate that a one standard deviation improvement in test scores is associated with a 2.5 percent increase in dollars invested in a building.

Noise or News? Learning about the Content of Test-Based School Achievement Measures

Abstract Test-based measures of school performance are increasingly used to inform both education policy and families’ school choice decisions. There are, however, concerns about the reliability of these measures. This paper assesses the extent to which cross-sectional differences in schools’ average achievement on standardized tests reflect transitory factors, using data from a 1999–2006 panel of public and private schools in British Columbia, Canada. Sampling variation and one-time mean reverting shocks are shown to be significant sources of cross-sectional variation in schools’ mean test scores. The results therefore suggest that public dissemination of information about schools’ average achievement on standardized tests could potentially mislead or confuse parents. These results should also encourage caution in the design of policies that attach monetary or nonmonetary rewards or sanctions to schools on the basis of test-based achievement and suggest a need for more sophisticated measures of school performance.

The role of school performance in narrowing gender gaps in the formation of STEM aspirations: a cross-national study.

This study uses cross-national evidence to estimate the effect of school peer performance on the size of the gender gap in the formation of STEM career aspirations. We argue that STEM aspirations are influenced not only by gender stereotyping in the national culture but also by the performance of peers in the local school environment. Our analyses are based on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). They investigate whether 15-year-old students from 55 different countries expect to have STEM jobs at the age of 30. We find considerable gender differences in the plans to pursue careers in STEM occupations in all countries. Using PISA test scores in math and science aggregated at the school level as a measure of school performance, we find that stronger performance environments have a negative impact on student career aspirations in STEM. Although girls are less likely than boys to aspire to STEM occupations, even when they have comparable abilities, boys respond more than girls to competitive school performance environments. As a consequence, the aspirations gender gap narrows for high-performing students in stronger performance environments. We show that those effects are larger in countries that do not sort students into different educational tracks.

Abstract T P391: Stroke Knowledge Among Children Is Associated With Measures Of Economic Need

Background and Purpose: To identify potential community- and school-level quality measures which may influence trends in baseline stroke knowledge of children participating in the Hip Hop Stroke program from 2005-2014. Methods: We gathered baseline stroke knowledge surveys from 2,839 available surveys of 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students enrolled in the Hip Hop Stroke program from November 2005-April 2014. We explored several objective standardized factors assessed city-wide, including performance grade (letter categories A-F, as measured via standardized testing) and economic need index (incorporates subsidized housing and meals; range 0-2 and higher scores indicate higher needs; example: a value of 2 indicates 100% students requiring food and housing subsidies or support). Students who left ≥3 questions blank were discarded; other blank answers were treated as missing. Data were analyzed using Chi-Square and regression analysis (SPSS v22.0). Results: Schools studied included those with performance grades B (n=196), C (n=1590), and D (n=1053) and mean economic need index of 0.85 (SD 0.23). For a composite assessment of knowledge including 4 stroke symptoms (blurred vision, facial droop, sudden headache, and slurred speech), 1 distractor (chest pain), and urgent action plan (call 911), asked consistently since 2006, overall students scored a mean 2.86 (95% CI: 2.80-2.92; possible range 0-6, expected value 2.75). For quartiles of economic need, means scores ranged from Q1: 2.89 (95% CI: 2.79-2.99), Q2: 3.08 (95% CI: 2.96-3.20), Q3: 2.77 (95% CI: 2.66-2.89), and Q4: 2.57 (95% CI: 2.43-2.71), p-trend <0.001. Students at B schools scored 2.96 (95% CI: 2.72-3.20), C: 2.93 (95% CI 2.85-3.01), D: 2.71 (95% CI: 2.63-2.81), p-trend=0.001. Conclusion: Lower student knowledge of stroke is strongly associated with measures of greater economic need and lower school performance. Consideration should be given to focus implementation of stroke education campaigns in schools and communities with higher needs.

UK medical selection: lottery or meritocracy?

From senior school through to consultancy, a plethora of assessments shape medical careers. Multiple methods of assessment are used to discriminate between applicants. Medical selection in the UK appears to be moving increasingly towards non-knowledge-based testing at all career stages. We review the evidence for non-knowledge-based tests and discuss their perceived benefits. We raise the question: is the current use of non-knowledge-based tests within the UK at risk of undermining more robust measures of medical school and postgraduate performance?

Psychological and psychobiological stress in the relationship between basic cognitive function and school performance. [El estrés psicológico y psicobiológico en la relación entre funcionamiento cognitivo básico y rendimiento académico

This study analyses the role played by daily stress, assessed through self-report and at the psychobiological level, in relation to basic cognitive function when predicting school performance. The sample com- prised 100 schoolchildren (55 girls and 45 boys, age range 8 to 11 years) from a state school in the city of Malaga (Spain). Daily stress was assessed through the Childrens Daily Stress Inventory (IIEC in Spanish; Trianes et al., 2009). Psychobiological stress was measured through the corti- sol/DHEAS ratio, derived from saliva samples taken in the morning on two consecutive days. Basic cognitive skills were assessed by means of the Computerized Cognitive Assessment System (CDR battery; Wesnes et al., 2003, 2000). Finally, the measure of school performance was the mean val- ue of the final grades recorded in the childs school report. In addition to descriptive and correlational statistical analyses, multiple regression analyses were conducted in order to assess the model. The results show that chil- drens daily stress self-reported contributes to predict school performance, and has proven to be more influential than basic cognitive function when it comes to predict school performance. Therefore, in order to achieve good school performance, a pupil not only requires good basic cognitive func- tion, but must also present low levels of self-reported daily stress. These findings suggest a new way of explaining and predicting school failure.

Far transfer to language and math of a short software-based gaming intervention

Executive functions (EF) in children can be trained, but it remains unknown whether training-related benefits elicit far transfer to real-life situations. Here, we investigate whether a set of computerized games might yield near and far transfer on an experimental and an active control group of low-SES otherwise typically developing 6-y-olds in a 3-mo pretest-training-posttest design that was ecologically deployed (at school). The intervention elicits transfer to some (but not all) facets of executive function. These changes cascade to real-world measures of school performance. The intervention equalizes academic outcomes across children who regularly attend school and those who do not because of social and familiar circumstances.

“It's Not Easy Being Green”: Charter Schools, the Arts, and Students with Diverse Needs

At the heart of current education reform is the charter school movement. Charter schools, their role in the New Orleans, Louisiana, educational community, and the effect of charter schools on students with special needs are the focus of this article. New Orleans, Louisiana, has the largest number of students attending public charter schools in the nation, and the struggle of one student, Noah, will illustrate some of the gaps in services that have been created by the new system. Unclear state guidelines, potentially exclusionary acceptance practices, school performance measures that emphasize typical performance in science and language, and lack of effective guidance have led to concerns regarding the equity of services for students with special needs. Potential solutions to these problems are identified and delineated. These include the creation of a central office to oversee special services, a requirement that charter school applicants outline their plan to address creative arts needs and special education needs, an increasing emphasis on arts as a part of school performance measurements, and increasing general awareness of the importance of creative arts in a competitive educational paradigm for all students, including those with special needs.

Measuring foundation school effectiveness using English administrative data, survey data and a regression discontinuity design

Apparently sophisticated school performance measures have been used to claim that giving schools autonomy from local government control improves pupil exam performance. This paper explores the extent to which inferring causality between autonomy and pupil achievement is reasonable given that pupils are not randomly assigned to schools and schools do not randomly acquire autonomous status. Rich administrative data and the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England are used to evaluate whether school performance measures are confounded by pupil characteristics that explain both the chances of attending an autonomous school and academic achievement. The assignment of grant-maintained (and thus now foundation) status through a vote of parents is used to compare school that just did, and just did not, gain autonomy over a decade ago. These alternative estimation strategies suggest there is little evidence that foundation status casually yields superior school performance.

Subjective Sleepiness and Sleep Quality in Adolescents are Related to Objective and Subjective Measures of School Performance

This study investigated the relation between sleep and school performance in a large sample of 561 adolescents aged 11–18 years. Three subjective measures of sleep were used: sleepiness, sleep quality, and sleep duration. They were compared to three measures of school performance: objective school grades, self-reported school performance, and parent-reported school performance. Sleepiness – “I feel sleepy during the first hours at school” – appeared to predict both school grades and self-reported school performance. Sleep quality on the other hand – as a measure of (un)interrupted sleep and/or problems falling asleep or waking up – predicted parent-reported school performance. Self- and parent-reported school performance correlated only moderately with school grades. So it turns out that the measures used to measure either sleep or school performance impacts whether or not a relation is found. Further research on sleep and school performance should take this into account. The findings do underscore the notion that sleep in adolescence can be important for learning. They are compatible with the hypothesis that a reduced sleep quality can give rise to sleepiness in the first hours at school which results in lower school performance. This notion could have applied value in counseling adolescents and their parents in changing adolescents’ sleep behavior.

School Accountability: Can We Reward Schools and Avoid Pupil Selection?

School accountability schemes require measures of school performance, and these measures are in practice often based on pupil test scores. It is well-known that insufficiently correcting these test scores for pupil characteristics may provide incentives for inefficient pupil selection. We show that the trade-off between reward and pupil selection is not only a matter of sufficient information. A school accountability scheme that rewards school performance will create incentives for pupil selection, even under perfect information, unless the educational production function satisfies an (unrealistic) separability assumption. We propose different compromise solutions and discuss the resulting incentives in theory. The empirical relevance of our analysis – i.e., the rejection of the separability assumption and the magnitude of the incentives in the different compromise solutions – is illustrated with Flemish data.

Personal predictors of educational attainment after compulsory school: Influence of measures of vulnerability, health, and school performance

Getting a secondary education is essential in preventing future inequalities in health and socioeconomic status. We investigated to what degree personal predictors like low school performance, high vulnerability, and poor health status are associated with not completing a secondary education in a Danish youth cohort. This prospective study used data from a questionnaire in 2004 and register data in 2010. The study population consisted of 3053 adolescents born in 1989. Information on educational attainment from Statistics Denmark was divided into four categories: completed, still studying, dropped out, or never attained a secondary education. Data was analysed using multinomial logistic regression. Low grades when completing compulsory school predicted not having completed a secondary education by age 20/21 (odds ratios (OR) between 1.7 and 2.5). Low sense of coherence in childhood was associated with dropping out from a vocational education (OR 2.0). Low general health status was associated with dropping out (OR 2.2) or never attaining a secondary education (OR 2.7) and overweight was associated with never attaining a secondary education (OR 3.5). The study confirms the social gradient in educational attainment. Furthermore, the results indicate that factors related to the individual in terms of low school performance, low health status, and high vulnerability predict future success in the educational system. It is recommended that these high-risk groups are recognised and targeted when designing guidance and supervision programmes for youth at secondary education.