SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS: A RE‐EXAMINATION OF THE RESEARCH EVIDENCE Available to Purchase

Research studies of school effectiveness over the past decades have produced inconsistent and mutually contradictory findings. Early studies reached optimistic conclusions that the level of school inputs were directly related to the levels of student achievement. These were contradicted by subsequent studies which maintained that schools have little effect on student achievement which is independent of background and social context. More recent studies have questioned the research techniques of their predecessors and have cautiously emphasized the relationship between process variables and achievement. The inconsistent findings of the various research studies serve to highlight the conceptual and methodological problems involved in the area of school effectiveness. There is a lack of consensus among researchers about which measures are valid indicators of school effectiveness and the heavy concentration upon easily measured cognitive performances constitutes a limitation and imbalance in the studies. Future studies need to operationally define school effectiveness in a manner which will enable a range of measures to be taken which are valid, reliable and comprehend the full range of school effects if stronger conclusions are to be drawn. More sophisticated research techniques are also needed to identify process variables which relate to school effectiveness.