"SCHOOLS FOR QUALITY - WHAT DATA-BASED APPROACHES CAN CONTRIBUTE"

Foreword (extract)

The sixth yearbook of CIDREE addresses one of the hottest current themes of education policy in most European countries: quality evaluation and, particularly, the assessment of school level quality through measured outputs.
Schools and teachers need reliable feedback about the results of their work: this is a condition of continuous improvement of their way to organise teaching and learning. Without such a feedback no real improvement can take place. Making the quality of this feedback better is today one of the highest priorities of applied policy oriented educational research. This is why we talk more and more about the reliability of tests, the necessity to measure added value and the importance of using appropriate techniques to calculate it.

There see to be an increasing consensus among both politicians and educational researchers that the best way to improve the quality and effectiveness of education is to combine school autonomy with strong feedback mechanisms and a regulatory framework that gives strong incentives to schools to use the feedback they get for self-improvement. Schools can do this only if they behave as intelligent and motivated agents who are capable to interpret the evidence they receive about the outcome of their work, and are willing and capable to translate this evidence into developmental actions. The creation of this type of organisational intelligence requires external support to be provided by governments and development experts.

Gábor Halász
President of CIDREE

CONTENTS

Introduction
The Quality of Schools between Self-Evaluation and Accountability
by Peter Dobbelstein, Thomas Neidhard

Assessing Quality in Education: Concepts, Models and Instruments
by Alejandro Tiana Ferrer (Spain)

On the Meaning of Internal and External Evaluation for the Quality of Education during Educational Reforms
by Hana Zufanová (Czech Republic)

League Tables and Health Checks: The Use of Statistical Data for School Accountability and Self-Evaluation
by Ian Schagen, Dougal Hutchinson, Paula Hammond (Great Britain)

Equilibrium
On the Balance between Internal and External Evaluation in a Number of European Educational Systems
by Veerle Verhaegen (Belgium)

Potentials of Centralized Proficiency Tests for the Improvement of the Quality of Schools – an Example from North-Rhine-Westphalia
by Rainer Peek, Peter Dobbelstein

Perceiving the Impact of Inspections on the Improvement of School Quality
by Maria da Conceiçao Castro Ramos, Helder Guerreiro (Portugal)

Monitoring the Impact of the Matura on Teaching and Learning
by Zora-Rutar Ilc (Slovenia)

“Like the Fishermen in the Maelstrom!?”
Central Quantitative Performance Tests and Qualitative School Development in the USA
by Heinz Schirp (Germany)

2007/04/12