Educational evaluation

The accountability era has produced school grading systems that purport to evaluate school effectiveness yet utilize hegemonic formulas that label low-scoring schools and neighborhoods, depriving them of incentive monies tied to their school grades. This quantitative study analyzed the publicly available data of 106 elementary schools in one large urban district in Florida through the lens of Effective Schools Research. Significant findings revealed that the work of Edmonds (1982) and Lezotte (1991) supports a growth model when it comes to school-based assessments and outcomes. The schools in the sample earned cumulative incentive rewards over time that were negatively correlated with the schools’ average percentage of economically disadvantaged students. The lower a school’s average percentage of economically disadvantaged students, the higher the school's average grade. This finding held true for the “A”-graded schools with the lowest average economically disadvantaged percentages from 1999 to 2019. This study also found that the schools in the sample with the larger average percentages of economically disadvantaged students would exhibit higher school grades if calculations using only their language arts and math gains were used. These findings have implications for how we might rebuild the assessment of our neighborhood schools and transform the policy structures that contribute to social and educational inequities.

Assessment is frequently cited within the student affairs literature as a way of continuously improving programs, services, and events (Henning & Roberts, 2016; Upcraft & Schuh, 1996). However, the data collected through assessment is infrequently used to improve student affairs offerings due to practitioners’ fear, practitioner’s lack of training, a lack of leadership within the division or university, or an emphasis on assessment as a method of reporting results rather than improving offerings, such as programs, services, initiatives, or events (Cox et al., 2017; Fuller & Lane, 2017). In the limited published studies about how student affairs professionals use assessment data, many professionals admit they do not have a plan to use their assessment data and only a small number have a plan to use their assessment data to make changes (Beshara-Blauth, 2018; Cox et al., 2017; McCaul, 2015; Parnell et al., 2018; Ridgeway, 2014). The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand how student affairs directors who have been identified as exemplars use their assessment data to make changes. The research questions for the study were: 1) How do student affair directors use assessment data in their role to make changes? 2) How do student affairs directors learn to use their data to make changes? And, 3) What influences student affairs directors to use their data to make changes?

The purpose of the current outcome study was to investigate the difference in grade 9 completion rate and student engagement between grade 9 students in the treatment group who received the Student Success Sills (SSS) classroom program (Brigman & Webb, 2010) and grade 9 students in the comparison group who did not receive the SSS classroom program. The sample consisted of grade 9 students enrolled in Intensive Reading classes, a required course for all high school students in the state of Florida who are below reading proficiency. School A served as the treatment group (n=98) and School B served as the comparison group (n=99). Certified school counselors in the treatment group implemented five, 45 minute SSS lessons and three booster lessons after being trained in the manualized use of the program and other related study procedures. A quasi-experimental pretest posttest research design was employed to
examine the impact of the SSS classroom program on grade 9 completion rate and student engagement. The unit of analysis was individual grade 9 students. Grade 9 completion rate was measured by academic credits. Student engagement was measured by attendance rate and the Student Engagement in School Success Skills (SESSS) instrument.

This quantitative study examined secondary schools across a south Florida school
district to determine the relationship between school characteristics and measures of
teacher quality with the aim of ascertaining the equitable distribution of the educational
resource, teacher quality. Data regarding student population, staff climate survey
responses, school points, and measures of teacher quality were requested from the school
district; however, the requested teacher quality data was not available from the district.
The researcher accessed publicly available teacher quality data from the Florida
Department of Education regarding advanced degree completion, out-of-field teachers,
and highly qualified teachers to serve as measures of teacher quality at secondary
schools.
Data were collected and analyzed using quantitative methods for 119 schools that
served as the unit of analysis. Using multiple regressions, the study found a significant negative relationship between the percentage of students participating in the free and
reduced-price lunch program and the percentage of teachers who possessed an advanced
degree. The study also found a significant positive relationship between the percentages
of Black students, English language learners, students with disabilities, students
participating in the free and reduced-price lunch program and the percentage of out-offield
teachers. Additionally, the study found a significant positive relationship between
the percentages of Hispanic students, students with disabilities, students participating in
the free and reduced-price lunch program, and the percentage of not highly qualified
teachers at schools. The investigation also discovered predictive relationships between
some of these school characteristics and the measures of teacher quality examined in the
study.
All of the findings provided evidence of structural inequality regarding the
distribution of teacher quality and were analyzed by the study’s theoretical framework,
which drew on critical race theory, critical multiculturalism, and other critical studies.
These works underscore the inequitable distribution of teacher quality. Implications and
suggestions for future research are offered for further examination of the equitable
distribution of teacher quality and the role of policy to inform the equitable distribution of
teacher quality across schools in order to address the most urgent problem facing U.S.
education: the unequal distribution of quality teachers.

This study explored the impact of peer reputations for academic ability and school-related affect upon fourth- through eighth-graders' academic outcomes. In light of the prevailing stereotypes regarding the differential academic abilities of girls and boys (favoring girls in English, and boys in math and science), it was hypothesized that peer reputations in English would be more predictive of outcomes for girls than for boys, while math and science reputations would be most predictive of boys' outcomes. Peer reputations were found to be predictive of school grades, but not of standardized test scores. Although ability reputations in most areas were predictive of grades for both sexes, modest gender differences were observed which were consistent with hypotheses. Results suggest that children's peer reputations may play an important role in their academic achievement, especially within domains most central to their gender identities. Implications and suggestions for future directions are discussed.

This study explored the extent and nature of academic peer reputation upon children's academic self-concept. Peer and self-perceptions of academic ability and affect were assessed for the subject domains of English, math, and science in order to investigate the generality of peer reputation influences across academic subject areas, and determine the extent to which gender differences might be evident. Gender differences were hypothesized, and peer reputation was expected to have the most influence on academic self-concept in school domains viewed as gender-normative and thus central to self-concept. MR analyses provided some support for this gender-congruency hypothesis, as it was primarily children's academic ability reputation in gender-congruent areas that was predictive of ability self-concept, and, influential with respect to perceived ability in normative domains. Contrary to expectations, peer affective reputation was more predictive with respect to gender-incongruent domains. Results were interpreted to suggest the dominance of gender-schema consistency concerns in relation to ability perceptions, but contrast effects in relation to school affect.

In this thesis a prediction model using graduation rate as the performance indicator is obtained for community colleges for three cohort years, 2003, 2004, and 2005 in the states of California, Florida, and Michigan. Multiple Regression analysis, using an aggregate of seven predictor variables, was employed in determining this prediction model. From this prediction model, a predicted graduation rate was obtained for each of the 142 institutions in this study. Using this predicted graduation rate, an Institutional Performance Ratio (IPR), was then calculated for each institution, by dividing the actual graduation rate for each institution by its predicted graduation rate. These IPR values were then used to classify the performance of each institution as meeting expectation, exceeding expectation or falling below expectation. Inter institutional comparisons were also made using these IPR values.