Value-added School Research Articles

부가가치모형 기반의 학교행복지수 산출 및 학생들이 행복한 학교의 특성 분석

This study aimed to calculate the School Happiness Index using a value-added model and analyze characteristics of happy schools. The value-added School Happiness Index was calculated after controlling for background characteristics and pre-happiness scores, which reflected changes in students' happiness scores compared to schools with similar backgrounds. KCYPS 2018 data was used, and a three-level multilevel growth model and school-level path analysis were applied to estimate the value-added School Happiness Index and examine related middle school characteristics. The findings revealed that peer relationships and academic enthusiasm in schools were identified as crucial school characteristics for promoting school happiness. The results of this study can contribute to increasing educational interest in student happiness in schools and serve as empirical evidence for promoting happy schools.

Does Placement Predict Performance? Associations Between Student Teaching Environments and Candidates’ Performance Assessment Scores

In the present study, we examine whether characteristics of student teaching sites and cooperating teachers predict teacher candidates’ edTPA scores. Using data from North Carolina, we find that candidates earn higher edTPA scores if they student-taught in a high value-added school and with a cooperating teacher earning higher evaluation ratings. Evidence also suggests that candidates earn higher scores when they are mentored by a cooperating teacher who is more familiar with performance assessments. Finally, we find that the relationships between student teaching environments and edTPA scores vary by characteristics of the candidate. This study reinforces prior work on the importance of learning environments to teacher development and the importance of preparation programs securing placements in high-quality learning environments. Our results may also have implications for the use of performance assessments by states and preparation programs.

Good schools or good students? The importance of selectivity for school rankings

ABSTRACT This paper uses a rich set of student background characteristics to estimate the value added of second-level schools in Ireland. We show that there is a considerable degree of reranking of schools when we move from analysing raw outcomes to value added; in many cases the best performing schools in raw terms are not the best in value-added terms. We show that, contrary to popular perception, fee-paying schools do not add higher value than other schools. A simulation exercise suggests that if parents chose the best value-added school from among the set of feasible schools, then this reallocation of students has the potential to increase academic achievement substantially.

When Information is Not Enough: Evidence from a Centralized School Choice System

Students often make school choice decisions with inadequate information. We present results from delivering information to randomly selected students (and some randomly selected parents) across 900 junior high schools in Ghana, a country with universal secondary school choice. We provided guidance on application strategies and reported the selectivity and exit exam performance of secondary schools, information students and parents prioritized. We find that despite information changing the characteristics of schools to which students applied and students gaining admission to higher value-added schools, they were not more likely to matriculate on time or at all. Information was not the only constraint.

Good Schools or Good Students? The Importance of Selectivity for School Rankings

This paper uses a rich set of student background characteristics, including early measures of cognitive and non-cognitive skills, to estimate the value added of second-level schools in Ireland. Although there are high performing schools in both raw and value-added terms, there is a considerable degree of reranking of schools when we move to value added. In many cases the best performing schools in raw terms are not the best in value-added terms. In addition we find that parents tend to choose schools on the basis of raw results rather than value added. We estimate that if parents chose the best value-added school from among the set of feasible schools, then this reallocation of students would increase academic achievement substantially.

Learning-Centered Leadership Practices for Effective High Schools Serving At-Risk Students

Background/ContextModest gains in NAEP scores by American high schools over the past twenty years highlight the need to identify different factors associated with gains in student achievement. Amongst those potential factors is school leadership; limited research on leaders’ work in secondary schools highlights the need to understand how high school leaders structure their schools to promote student learning.Purpose/Objective/Research QuestionWe ask the question, What distinguishes leaders’ practices in more effective high schools from those in less effective high schools that serve large proportions of at-risk youth?Research DesignWe first identify more and less effective high schools using value-added scores, and we analyze interview, observational, and survey data collected in these schools to compare and contrast how leaders support key practices and organizational routines by their staff. Our analyses include work by traditional leaders (principals and assistant principals) as well as other leaders’ (e.g. department chairs, teacher leaders) practices within the schools.Conclusions/RecommendationsWe found differences between higher and lower value-added schools in terms of leaders’ conceptions of the intended routines (those ideal policies that faculty are to carry out) and their attention to the implementation of them, through closer examination of faculty members’ actual actions or their directed support for faculty members’ practices. Two primary themes characterize the differences in their practices. First, leaders in higher value-added high schools are more involved in, intentional about, and attentive to how their ideal/intended routines are implemented, thus ensuring that teachers’ actual practices are changed. They focus on how these routines provide ongoing monitoring and feedback for their faculty to build and improve teachers’ quality instruction, alignment of curriculum, and systems of support for students. Second, higher value-added school leaders provided more targeted, systemic efforts to support personalized learning for students.

Avoiding Bias When Estimating the Consistency and Stability of Value-Added School Effects

The traditional approach to estimating the consistency of school effects across subject areas and the stability of school effects across time is to fit separate value-added multilevel models to each subject or cohort and to correlate the resulting empirical Bayes predictions. We show that this gives biased correlations and these biases cannot be avoided by simply correlating “unshruken” or “reflated” versions of these predicted random effects. In contrast, we show that fitting a joint value-added multilevel multivariate response model simultaneously to all subjects or cohorts directly gives unbiased estimates of the correlations of interest. There is no need to correlate the resulting empirical Bayes predictions and indeed we show that this should again be avoided as the resulting correlations are also biased. We illustrate our arguments with separate applications to measuring the consistency and stability of school effects in primary and secondary school settings. However, our arguments apply more generally to other areas of application where researchers routinely interpret correlations between predicted random effects rather than estimating and interpreting these correlation directly.

Understanding Differences in Instructional Quality between High and Lower Value-Added Schools in a Large Urban District

Background/ContextHigh schools are under increasing pressure to move beyond just graduating students, and many high schools today continue to have low rates of student retention and learning, particularly for students from traditionally low-performing subgroups. Differential dropout rates, wherein low-income students, minorities, and English language learners leave school at higher rates than other students, only compound the problem.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of StudyIn this study, we examine differences in instructional quality between two higher and two lower value-added high schools, as measured by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System – Secondary (CLASS-S). It explores (1) differences in levels of instructional quality, (2) differences in the proportions of students taking advanced courses, and (3) differences in the way teachers think and talk about their classroom challenges.Research DesignThis is a mixed methods study that combines data from classroom observation protocols with teacher interview data. We use multilevel statistical models to address the first two research questions and emergent, inductive coding to determine commonalities within schools in how teachers implement higher-quality instructional practices.Findings/ResultsWe find that the average difference in instructional quality, as measured by the CLASS-S, was not very wide across our four case study schools and that the biggest differences were between the two higher value-added high schools. Our interview data suggest that teachers in the two higher value-added schools are more proactive about providing emotional support and preventing behavioral problems, and intentional about attending to content and engaging students in higher-order thinking.Conclusions/RecommendationsThe lack of variation in classroom instructional practice across schools also suggests the need to attend to the ways that schools support academic learning outside of the classroom. Qualitative findings signal that the quality of classroom instruction is not the only critical input to students’ learning gains when trying to identify what leads schools to place highly in value-added rankings.

The Apprentice

Background: Nascent empirical research demonstrates the sizable impacts of principals on student achievement. More research is needed on the pathways to the principalship and how principals’ characteristics and training experiences influence their performance. Purpose: (1) To describe the characteristics of first-time principals and the schools that hire them and (2) to assess the extent to which the characteristics of early-career principals and the environments in which they previously worked are associated with changes in student achievement in the schools they lead. Setting: North Carolina public schools. Sample: All first-time principals (981 in total) from 2006-2007 through 2009-2010 and the students attending the schools where they serve. Data: Administrative data on students, school personnel (teachers, assistant principals, principals), and schools provided by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Research Methods: Covariate adjustment and fixed effects value-added models. Findings: We find that first-time principals are “homegrown”—hired from within the district. On average, first-time principals wait 5.12 years between completing formal principal preparation and assuming school leadership and spend 4.15 years as assistant principals in North Carolina public schools. Several principal characteristics, including holding a doctorate from an in-state private or out-of-state institution (negative) and serving as an assistant principal in a high–value-added school (positive), are significantly associated with student achievement gains. Conclusions: This study suggests that the effectiveness of early-career principals may be affected by the environment where they served as assistant principals. Further analyses are needed to better understand the attributes of meaningful assistant principal experiences.

Communicative Representations of Chinese “Gao-Kao” High Stakes Testing Using Paralleled Testing in the U.S. as Cross-Cultural Context

The Chinese College Entrance Examination (“ Gao-Kao ”) is the most high stakes assessment in China and parallels the most competitive examinations globally. Although it can provide Chinese educators and policy makers with an enormous pool of information about student achievement growth, school efficiency, etc., the current use of the test is mainly limited to ranking students by their raw scores. In this study, we tried two modifications to the traditional test to connect the assessment outcomes with school accountability. First, we linked the Gao-Kao English tests from 2010 and 2011 and aligned them on a Rasch scale. Secondly, we collected background information of the examinees via a background survey. The result showed that students from Hainan province improved a little in 2011 overall. In addition, school level reports were generated to show the school’s growth as well as the county and province averages. By implementing test equating and background survey measures, this study demonstrated that Gao-Kao data can be used to construct a longitudinal data sourceas an initial step to build a value-added school accountability system. The aforementioned findings and how they are communicated help to frame global use of such high stakes testing. The international context provides a backdrop within which the findings are nested. Contrast with testing in the U.S. serves to highlight unique features of the Gao-Kao examination approach.

A comparison between value-added school estimates and currently used metrics of school accountability in California

This study compared a value-added approach to school accountability to the currently used metrics of accountability in California of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) and Academic Performance Index (API). Five-year student panel data (N = 53,733) from 29 elementary schools in a large California school district were used to address the research questions. Results show the strong relationship between AYP and API to student background measures. Schools with a majority of students from low socioeconomic background lagged far below schools from more affluent context. Results from the value-added approach however, showed a strongly diminished relationship to student background. Under this model, several schools from a low socioeconomic context can be seen as high achieving. Additionally, little evidence was found that high levels of student achievement negatively affect school value-added scores. Schools that enroll large proportions of advanced students, which often do not show positive growth across years are not penalized under a value-added approach. Recommendations for policy and future research are discussed.

Leading With Data: Evidence From the National Center on Scaling up Effective Schools

Through comparative case study, we seek to understand the ways in which actors in high schools use and think about performance data. In particular, we compare data use in higher and lower value-added schools. Data use is conceptualized here as having access to a host of available performance data on students, using them to guide instructional decisions, and building cultures in which data are seen as vehicles for improvements in practice. While our findings do not show consistent differences in the higher and lower value-added schools, they do allow us to set out an expanded conceptualization of school data use.

Using Burke's Dramatistic Pentad to Interpret Chinese "Gao-Kao" High Stakes Testing and Stressing - Paralelled Testing in the U.S. as Cross-Cultural Context

The Chinese College Entrance Examination (“Gao-Kao”) is the most high stakes assessment in China and parallels the most competitive examinations globally. Although it can provide Chinese educators and policy makers with an enormous pool of information about student achievement growth, school efficiency, etc., the current use of the test is mainly limited to ranking students by their raw scores. In this study, we tried two modifications to the traditional test to connect the assessment outcomes with school accountability. First, we linked the Gao-Kao English tests from 2010 and 2011 and aligned them on a Rasch scale. Secondly, we collected background information of the examinees via a background survey. The result showed that students from Hainan province improved a little in 2011 overall. In addition, school level reports were generated to show the school’s growth as well as the county and province averages. By implementing test equating and background survey measures, this study demonstrated that Gao-Kao data can be used to construct a longitudinal data source as an initial step to build a value-added school accountability system. The aforementioned findings and how they are communicated help to frame global use of such high stakes testing. Kenneth Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad is used as foundation for communicative interpretation of these findings. The international context provides backdrop within which the findings are nested. Contrast with testing in the U.S. serves to highlight unique features of the GaoKao examination approach.

Does school ethos explain the relationship between value-added education and teenage substance use? A cohort study

Previous studies found lower substance use in schools achieving better examination and truancy results than expected, given their pupil populations (high value-added schools). This study examines whether these findings are replicated in West Scotland and whether school ethos indicators focussing on pupils' perceptions of schooling (environment, involvement, engagement and teacher–pupil relations) mediate the associations. Teenagers from forty-one schools (S2, aged 13, n = 2268; S4, aged 15, n = 2096) previously surveyed in primary school (aged 11, n = 2482) were surveyed in the late 1990s. School value-added scores were derived from standardised residuals of two regression equations separately predicting from pupils' socio-demographic characteristics (1) proportions of pupils passing five Scottish Standard Grade Examinations, and (2) half-day truancy loss. Outcomes were current smoking, monthly drinking, ever illicit drug use. Random effects logistic regression models adjusted for potential pupil-level confounders were used to assess (1) associations between substance use and school-level value-added scores and (2) whether these associations were mediated by pupils' perceptions of schooling or other school-level factors (school roll, religious denomination and mean aggregated school-level ethos scores). Against expectations, value-added education was positively associated with smoking (Odds Ratios [95% confidence intervals] for one standard deviation increase in value-added scores were 1.28 [1.02–1.61] in S2 and 1.13 [1.00–1.27] in S4) and positively but weakly and non-significantly associated with drinking and drug use. Engagement and positive teacher–pupil relations were strongly and negatively associated with all substance use outcomes at both ages. Other school-level factors appeared weakly and largely non-significantly related to substance use. Value-added scores were unrelated to school ethos measures and no ethos measure mediated associations between value-added education and substance use. We conclude that substance use in Scotland is more likely in high value-added schools, among disengaged students and those with poorer student–teacher relationships. Understanding the underpinning mechanisms is a potentially important public health concern.

The Persistence of School-Level Value-Added

Using longitudinal data for an entire state from 2004 to 2008, this article describes the results from an empirical investigation of the persistence of value-added school effects on student achievement in reading and math. It shows that when schools are the principal units of analysis rather than teachers, the persistence of estimated school effects across grades can only be reasonably identified by placing strong constraints on the variable persistence model implemented by Lockwood, McCaffrey, Mariano, and Setodji. In general, there are relatively strong correlations between the school effects estimated using these constrained models and a reference model that assumes full persistence. These correlations vary somewhat by grade and the underlying test subject. The results from this study indicate cautious support for previous findings that the assumption of full persistence for cumulative value-added effects may be untenable, and evidence is also presented, which indicates a strong interaction by test subject. However, the practical impact of violating the assumption of full persistence appears to be smaller in the context of schools than it is for teachers.

RANKING AND SCHOOL AUTONOMY: EFFICIENCY EFFECTS OF NEW INITIATIVES ON THE SINGAPORE EDUCATION SYSTEM

From 1979, the Singapore government started to transform the nature of secondary education in Singapore. In 1979, nine schools were chosen as Special Assistance Plan (SAP) schools. After the call towards reforming the school system in the 1980s, the development of Independent schools evolved. In 1994, a new category — the autonomous school — was established. Besides reforming the school structure, in 1992, the "ST Schools 100" (first published by The Straits Times on 19 August 1992) started to rank the top 50 schools in the Special/Express stream and the top 40 schools in the Normal stream, along with separate tables listing the top value-added schools in both streams. Until quite recently, this ranking scheme had been endorsed by the Ministry of Education since 1992 and published on their website annually since 1995. This paper looks at how these new initiatives have affected secondary school outcomes. Comprising a panel data set of 30 of the top 50 schools in Singapore over the 1991–2001 period, the study looks at the technical efficiency of schools as a response to the introduction of new initiatives using two methodologies. The first baseline approach is that of a Corrected Ordinary Least Squares (COLS) multiple-output distance function. The second methodology used is the technical efficiency frontier effects model as described by Battese and Coelli (1995) and Coelli and Perelman (1996) which is a maximum likelihood estimation technique.

Value‐added education and smoking uptake in schools: a cohort study

To show that schools achieving higher examination pass and lower truancy rates than expected, given that their pupil populations (high value-added schools) are associated with a lower incidence of smoking among pupils (13-14 years). Value-added scores for schools were derived from standardized residuals of two regression equations predicting separately the proportion of pupils passing high school diplomas and the half-days lost to truancy from the socio-economic and ethnic profiles of pupils. The risk of regular smoking at 1- and 2-year follow-up was examined in relation to the value-added score in a cohort of 8352 UK pupils. Random-effects logistic regression was used to adjust for baseline smoking status and other adolescent smoking risk factors. A total of 52 schools, West Midlands, UK. Year 9 pupils aged 13-14 years (n = 8352) were followed-up after 1 year (n = 7444; 89.1% of original cohort) and 2 years (n = 6819; 84.6% of original cohort excluding pupils from two schools that dropped out). Regular smoking (at least one cigarette per week). Schools with high value-added scores occurred throughout the socio-demographic spectrum. The odds ratio (95% confidence interval) for regular smoking for a 1 standard deviation increase in the value-added measure was 0.85 (0.73-0.99) at 1-year and 0.80 (0.71-0.91) at 2-year follow-ups. Baseline smoking status did not moderate this. Schools with high value-added scores are associated with lower incidence of smoking. Some schools appear to break the strong link between deprivation and smoking. Understanding the mechanisms could be of great public health significance.

How good schools function: Exploring the processes within value-added schools in New Zealand

How good schools function: Exploring the processes within value-added schools in New Zealand