Management and Leadership Chapter 7

1. COURSENOTES
COURSE TITLE: MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION
COURSE CODE: EPB2033
PREPARED BY: TENGKU NOORAINUN TENGKU SHAHDAN

2. COURSE: EPB2033: MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION
FACULTY: EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
TOPIC 7: School Effectiveness, Accountability, and Improvement
(Textbook Chapter 8)
7.0 Introduction
This topic will explain schools effectiveness, accountability and improvement. School
effectiveness represents enduring and fundamental challenges to their practice. Learners
should be able to give examples of: (a) that different schools achieve different levels of
success (even with similar student populations); and (b) schools emphasized social and
emotional growth and equity for all students. At the end of this topic, learners should be able
to explain how strong the external environment of schools is calling added emphasis on task
accomplishment.
7.0.1 Overview
An open social-systems model provides the guiding framework for considering the
effectiveness, accountability, and improvement of schools. To create effective
schools, educators have to surmount an array of ever-changing challenges. As
desired states that an organization is trying to attain, goals provide direction and
motivation, reduce uncertainty for participants, and represent standards for
assessment. Furthermore, input-output, or production-function, studies examine how
educational resources or inputs are changed into educational outcomes. To improve
organizational effectiveness and to meet accountability demands, educators are using
a number of standards-based and comprehensive school reform approaches.
7.1 Key Contents
7.1.1 School Effectiveness – Challenging Administrative Practices
School effectiveness represents enduring and fundamental challenges to their
practice. Both educators and the public, for instance, acknowledge that different
school achieve different levels of success, even with similar student populations. In
sum, school administrators face three basic challenges;
• How to demonstrate their system is effective.
• How to continually demonstrate effectiveness as definitions change.
• How to please multiple stakeholders with different definitions of effectiveness.
7.1.2 Social Systems and School Effectiveness
Effectiveness indicators can be derived for each phase of the open-system cycle –
input, transformations and outputs.
• Input criteria – for schools environmental components that influence
organizational effectiveness. Inputs can be both monetary and nonmonetary.
Monetary resources commonly refer to taxable wealth, money, or things that
money buys. Examples include formal qualifications of the faculty and
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3. COURSE: EPB2033: MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION
FACULTY: EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
administration, book, libraries, instructional technology, and physical facilities.
Nonmonetary inputs are elements such as state and local educational policies and
standards.
• Performance outcomes – traditionally organizational effectiveness has been
defined relative to the degree of goal attainment. Goals provide direction and
motivation, and they reduce uncertainty for participants and represent standards
for assessing the organization. As Scott (2003) states that goals are used to
evaluate organizational activities as well as to motivate and direct them. In the
current policy environment of education, goals are reflected in the standards for
judging the quality and quantity of performance outcomes schools produce. From
a social-system perspective, important outputs include, for students academic
achievement, creativity, self-confidence, aspirations, expectations, and
attendance, graduation, and dropout rates; for teachers, job satisfaction,
absenteeism, and turnover.
• Transformation Criteria – Transformational criteria are the quantity, quality,
and consistency of the internal processes and structures that transform the inputs
to outcomes. Examples of transformational criteria are the structure and content
of the curriculum, health of the interpersonal climate, motivation levels of
students and teachers, teacher and administrator leadership, quality and quantity
of instruction, and quality-control procedures such as the number of test given,
evaluation of teaching and so on.
7.1.3 Accountability and Educational Reform
Systematic school reform is make a well-reasoned argument for establishing systems
of school accountability and improvement using a set of critical environmental, input,
transformational, and performance outcome variables. The critical components of the
model include a unifying vision with supporting goals and an instructional guidance
scheme consisting of curriculum frameworks and standards aligned with high-quality
assessment instruments.
• Accountability - generally include three components;
- Standards to indentify the subject matter knowledge and skills to be
learned.
- Tests aligned with the standards.
- Consequences to recognize the differing levels of goal attainment.
• Educational Reform
James Coleman and Associates (1966)
• Largest survey of American public education ever undertaken.
• Controlled for home background variables such as family size,
structure and socioeconomic status.
Findings: School inputs showed only weak relationships to differences in
student achievement.
Rowan, Correnti, and Miller Study (2002)
• Temper the conclusions of the Coleman Report.
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4. COURSE: EPB2033: MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION
FACULTY: EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
• When students enter kindergarten, family size, structure and
socioeconomic status are moderately correlated with levels of
achievement.
• Once in elementary school, the effects of home background variables
apparently fade.
• Achievement growth is largely explained by the effects of instructional
differences among schools and classrooms.
Findings: Differences in family backgrounds are more strongly correlated
to initial levels of student achievement than their year-to-year gains.
7.2 Key assumptions and principles
• A social-systems perspective on school effectiveness has three important
dimensions, acquiring resources from the environment (input) harmonious
operation of the school’s internal components (transformation/throughput) and
goal achievement (output performance).
• Congruence among the internal elements enhances the system’s ability to secure
needed resources from the environment, to build the capacity of the
transformational elements, and to effectively achieve its goals.
• School effectiveness is dynamic concept that has multiple dimensions, multiple
stakeholders, and multiple environmental constraints.
7.3 Summary
Organizational effectiveness now plays such a central role in the theory and practice of
education that thorough understanding of the concept is essential. The inputs as well as the
transformational processes of the system are equal partners in determining both the quality
and the effectiveness of schools. Accountability systems for schools typically include
standards to identify the subject matter knowledge and skills to be learned; test aligned with
the standards to determine whether the standards have been met and to evaluate school
improvement initiatives.
7.4 Tutorial Activities
7.4.1 Activity 1
You have just been appointed principal of your school. How would you go about
determining the effectiveness of your school? What criteria would you use? Consider
at least three sets of criteria: input, transformation, and performance. Which set of
criteria would you emphasize and why?
7.5 REFERENCES
Wayne K. H, & Cecil G. M. (2008). Educational Administration: Theory, Research, and
Practice. Eight Edition -International Edition. New York: McGraw – Hill Companies.
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