Identifying the comparative academic performance of secondary schools

Abstract

PurposeOne of the features of the New Zealand secondary schools system is that achievement closely reflects the taught curriculum. The National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) directly assesses student achievement on the secondary school curriculum through a combination of criterion‐based internal and external assessments. The nature of NCEA means school‐level results not only reflect student achievement but also the ability of leaders to organise, deliver, and monitor a relevant curriculum for students. This paper aims to describe how NCEA data were used to develop a simple but fair system to assess the relative performance of secondary schools.Design/methodology/approachNo standardised measures of performance prior to Year 11 are available in New Zealand. Nor are student‐level data available. In the absence of these, multiple indicators of gross performance, added value and improvement over time were analysed using a schools‐of‐similar‐type methodology.FindingsResults indicated that schools in the low and middle SES communities were more likely to be improving than others, but these improving schools were also more likely to be already high‐ or mid‐performing. Low‐performing schools were least likely to be improving.Originality/valueSome advantages of this methodology are its ability to be utilised with any publicly available standards‐based achievement data, its validity as an indicator of leadership and organisational performance, and its ability to track school performance trends over time.

Principal instructional leadership and secondary school performance

“…Most schools identified here as improving were also categorised as already being mid-performing (Bendikson et al, 2011). The obvious unanswered question is: "What are the prerequisites for improvement?"…”

“…Publicly available student achievement data (from the National Certificate of Educational Achievement-NCEA) were used to categorise all 102 schools in the central North Island by performance level. A method of aggregating different NCEA indicators was developed in order to categorise schools as higher, mid-or lower performing (see Bendikson, Hattie, & Robinson, 2011). A second set of indicators was used to identify schools that were improving regardless of their present level of performance, because the aim of principal leadership is, or ought to be, to improve student outcomes (Elmore, 2004;Fullan, Cuttress, & Kilcher, 2005).…”

Organizational consulting models and performance improvement

“…The researchers note that students with low achievement received a greater positive impact from the cooperation in heterogeneous groups, yet they could not substantiate the reasons for this impact. Furthermore, Bendikson et al (2011) claim that the achievement of students from an unfavorable SEC environment can depend on the aspiration of a school to change results. The research findings show that schools in low and average SEC communities that autonomously set progress goals demonstrate good or average performance in comparison with others.…”

“…However, Branck et al's (2012) study provides contradicting evidence, suggesting that school leadership is not a significant predictor of better student achievements in low SEC status schools. A body of literature suggests that aspects, such as teacher professionalism (Jensen, 2013), development of socio-emotional skills of children (Durlak et al, 2011;Liu, 2016), creation of a positive school micro-climate (Berkowitz et al, 2017), different teaching strategies (Han et al, 2015), aspiration of a school to change the results (Bendikson et al, 2011), and the regional/national level of education policy (OECD, 2017), could improve students' learning achievements as a measure of primary school performance in low SEC status schools. School consultation has been indicated as a highly efficient intervention in solving problems, such as learning or/and behavioral difficulties (Kampwirth and Powers, 2016).…”

Schools as learning organizations

“…Hallinger and Murphy (1985) defined instructional leadership through three components: 1) Defining the school mission through the communication of school's goals, 2) managing the instructional program through curriculum coordination, instruction supervision and assessment, and monitoring student progress; and 3) promoting positive school learning climate through principal' s efforts to protect instructional time, provide incentives for teachers and learning, promote staff professional development and enforce academic standards. We can actually argue that this earlier understanding of instructional leadership was mainly principal-centered and direct (focused on improving teaching) (Gumus et al, 2018;Bendikson, Hattie & Robinson, 2011). In other words, it was focused on the quality of teacher practice, including the quality of the curriculum, teaching and assessment and the quality of teacher teaching and learning (Bendikson, Hattie & Robinson, 2011).…”