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Measuring and rewarding school improvement There is now a widely held view that the most effective strategy for improving countries’ educational performances is to improve the day-to-day work of schools. In 2010 the Australian Government announced a Reward for School Improvement initiative. Under this initiative, between 2015 and 2020, rewards totalling $388 million will be provided to schools that deliver the greatest improvements across a range of areas, including school attendance; literacy and numeracy performance; Year 12 attainment and results; and post-school destinations, such as the number of students going on to further education, training or work. ACER chief executive, Professor Geoff Masters, was commissioned by the Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations to provide advice on the best ways to measure school improvement, and on the approaches announced in the Reward for School Improvement initiative. The initiative proposes that schools meriting reward payments will be identified using ‘a transparent school improvement methodology’ based on an analysis of national data and school self-evaluations. Clear metrics are to be used to identify the amount of improvement achieved by each school. Professor Masters suggests caution in introducing outcomes-based incentive schemes, recommending that, if rewards are to be provided, they must be tied to matters over which schools have direct control. He said they must make transparent the relationship between rewards and the work of schools and promote highly effective, evidence-based practices. In particular, he warned that the basis of rewards cannot be obscure, ‘black-box’ manipulations of outcome measures to produce rank orders of schools. ‘If schools are left wondering why some schools received rewards and others did not, then the credibility of any reward scheme is likely to be undermined,’ Professor Masters said. Professor Masters therefore recommends the use of ‘practice-based’ measures of school improvement to complement ‘outcomes-based’ measures. The difficulty, he notes, is that there are currently no agreed practice-based measures of school performance or improvement. ‘Good measures of the core work of schools are not yet available – for example, the quality of classroom teaching or the quality of school leadership,’ Professor Masters said. ‘The development of better practice-based measures is essential if discussions of school improvement are to move beyond debates about test scores and their statistical adjustment.’ According to Professor Masters, the Reward for School Improvement initiative presents an opportunity – and a challenge – to support and promote improvements in school practices more directly than is possible by holding schools accountable for outcomes alone. To do this, evidence concerning the work of schools would have to be judged reliably so that conclusions about schools’ performances and improvements are credible, fair and comparable across schools. Professor Masters proposed some key principles that should underpin the Reward for School Improvement initiative, and identified a number of issues that need to be addressed. For information on these principles and issues read the full report, Measuring and Rewarding School Improvement, by Professor Geoff Masters. The full report is available from: http://www.acer.edu.au/documents/REVISED-REPORT-Measuring-and-Rewarding-School-Improvement-April-2012.pdf « Back to eNews
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There is now a widely held view that the most effective strategy for improving countries’ educational performances is to improve the day-to-day work of schools.

In 2010 the Australian Government announced a Reward for School Improvement initiative. Under this initiative, between 2015 and 2020, rewards totalling $388 million will be provided to schools that deliver the greatest improvements across a range of areas, including school attendance; literacy and numeracy performance; Year 12 attainment and results; and post-school destinations, such as the number of students going on to further education, training or work.

ACER chief executive, Professor Geoff Masters, was commissioned by the Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations to provide advice on the best ways to measure school improvement, and on the approaches announced in the Reward for School Improvement initiative.

The initiative proposes that schools meriting reward payments will be identified using ‘a transparent school improvement methodology’ based on an analysis of national data and school self-evaluations. Clear metrics are to be used to identify the amount of improvement achieved by each school.

Professor Masters suggests caution in introducing outcomes-based incentive schemes, recommending that, if rewards are to be provided, they must be tied to matters over which schools have direct control. He said they must make transparent the relationship between rewards and the work of schools and promote highly effective, evidence-based practices. In particular, he warned that the basis of rewards cannot be obscure, ‘black-box’ manipulations of outcome measures to produce rank orders of schools.

‘If schools are left wondering why some schools received rewards and others did not, then the credibility of any reward scheme is likely to be undermined,’ Professor Masters said.

Professor Masters therefore recommends the use of ‘practice-based’ measures of school improvement to complement ‘outcomes-based’ measures. The difficulty, he notes, is that there are currently no agreed practice-based measures of school performance or improvement.

‘Good measures of the core work of schools are not yet available – for example, the quality of classroom teaching or the quality of school leadership,’ Professor Masters said. ‘The development of better practice-based measures is essential if discussions of school improvement are to move beyond debates about test scores and their statistical adjustment.’

According to Professor Masters, the Reward for School Improvement initiative presents an opportunity – and a challenge – to support and promote improvements in school practices more directly than is possible by holding schools accountable for outcomes alone. To do this, evidence concerning the work of schools would have to be judged reliably so that conclusions about schools’ performances and improvements are credible, fair and comparable across schools.

Professor Masters proposed some key principles that should underpin the Reward for School Improvement initiative, and identified a number of issues that need to be addressed. For information on these principles and issues read the full report, Measuring and Rewarding School Improvement, by Professor Geoff Masters.

The full report is available from: http://www.acer.edu.au/documents/REVISED-REPORT-Measuring-and-Rewarding-School-Improvement-April-2012.pdf

Measuring and rewarding school improvement