In this commentary, the 3 review papers by Reynolds et al. (this issue), Muijs et al. (this issue), and Hopkins, Stringfield, Harris, Stoll, and Mackay (this issue) on "educational effectiveness", "teaching effectiveness", and "school and system improvement" are discussed. In the text, the 3 papers are occasionally…

Over the last 4 decades, the school effectiveness and school improvement research bases have gained prominence and recognition on the international stage. In both a theoretical and empirical sense, they have matured through a wide range of well-documented projects, interventions, and innovations across a range of countries, describing how efforts…

This paper is meant to help designers of educational accountability systems think more critically about the questions they want to ask schools and the kinds of analyses that best answer these questions. There are two essential questions in school evaluation: how good is this school, and is it getting better? Each of these questions then can be…

To become more effective leaders, principals must become informed of national quality initiatives and integrate them into their schools. Holding great responsibility for student achievement, principals are given lists of actions to take and others to avoid. Increased standards of licensure are addressed, as well as implementations of a systems…

Accountability has always been a basic concept in public education, although ideas about how to accomplish it have changed over the years. Problems in urban schools have given rise to the hope that carefully created systems of accountability might spur school improvement and school restructuring. Devising a system of genuine accountability in a…

The School Development Program (SDP) Model is a potentially useful alternative means of addressing the ills that plague public schools. Containing elements of the adjustment and social action models, it is an example of the ecological approach to prevention, which views behavior as a function of person and environment. After a background outline…

When school psychologists adopt an organization development perspective they are acting on a cluster of related concepts: (1) that because schools are social organizations, school effectiveness depends on the school's organizational culture; (2) that attempts to institute educational reforms only work when the reforms and the school culture mesh;…

An examination of definition, causes, variables, and strategies of implementation suggests the kinds of data necessary for measuring school effectiveness. By focusing on students who first enter school below grade level standards and by understanding that student learning is embedded in a system of key elements or variables that, over time, are…

In the past, different governance structures and assessment standards separated community college and K-12 systems and impaired the effectiveness of the education systems. This document examines emerging local, state, and federal policies and practices that are opening the way to successful collaborations between educational sectors. (Contains 13…

Five of the project teams of the Educational Quality Indicators (EQI) initiative of Alberta (Canada) came together to provide their perspectives on the initiative and to report their progress in developing local indicator systems that have the involvement and support of their respective communities. The conceptual framework of the EQI initiative,…

This paper outlines several policy and program suggestions for improving Connecticut's urban schools which build upon the States's current intiatives and incorporate the current research findings emanating from studies of effective schools. The author first provides a framework for his suggestions by reviewing research to delineate the…

The accountability system that is being implemented in the Dallas Independent School District (Texas) is a three-tier system. The first tier focuses at the school level. The second involves the District Improvement Plan, setting district accountability objectives. The third tier involves school effectiveness indices, which take into account…

A review of the literature on school effectiveness identifies elements at the system level and the building level that contribute to effectiveness. The literature also provides diagnostic tools for evaluating one of the most important components of school effectiveness, school culture and climate. (SLD)

School organizations must become responsive and flexible to address rapidly changing social, economic, and demographic conditions. Reform attempts to date have not worked because they were layered on old structures and perceptions in a fragmented, piecemeal fashion. The fundamental transformation of education that is required demands a paradigm…

Current school improvement tools are largely piecemeal and often lack credible supportive evidence. Knowledge Work Supervision (KWS) is built on the premise that schools must develop the capacity for sustaining districtwide improvements. Chapter 1, "The Past Before Us Is Not the Future," summarizes the key elements of the four phases of…