H. Guldemond

School governance, culture, and student achievement

This paper examines the influence of different social contexts of schooling on the effectiveness of schools, and is based on the premise that higher organizational levels influence all that takes place in the levels below them. This research depicts the core levels of school governance, school community, classroom culture, and their impact on student learning, and specifically studies the influence of the administrative and governance structures of public and private schools on the underlying level of the community of these schools. In turn, it is expected that the school community influences the educational culture of the primary learning process of pupils in classrooms. The results of multilevel analyses show that the differences in the maths achievement of pupils can be explained, in part, by these social contexts of learning. Furthermore, the findings show that coherence between school governors, school leaders, teachers and the school community (parents) produces a sense of community that, in turn, shapes conditions in schools that have a positive effect on pupil achievement. Differential effects of schooling in public and private education are mediated by the school governance characteristics of these schools, especially the differences in influences of the school community (parents) on the policy of the school board.

Improving Parental Involvement in Primary Education in Indonesia: Implementation, Effects and Costs

In a large-scale school improvement project in Indonesia the implementation, effects and costs of initiatives to increase parental involvement were compared with those of other interventions (teacher development, educational management and books and learning materials). It turned out that although parental involvement was not implemented very successfully in schools, this intervention is quite effective in improving student achievement. In comparison with the other interventions it is in fact the most efficient because costs are relatively low. Recommendations are given to implement parental involvement further, and to raise its effects without raising the costs.

The effectiveness of cohesive schools

This paper presents the findings of research into leadership and management of secondary education using configuration theory. Based on data from almost 100 secondary schools (school leaders and department heads), three different styles of management are distinguished. These leadership or management styles are based on the extent to which school leaders and departments heads make use of a set of six coordination mechanisms based on Mintzbergs configuration theory. Multilevel analysis has been used to determine the extent to which these leaderships styles affect student performance. Results show that one leadership style fits the definition of an effective type of management. In schools with such a leadership style, students reach higher achievement levels in mathematics than students in the other schools.

Variation in effectiveness between private and public schools: the impact of school and family networks

Abstract Building upon the assumption that cohesion between different levels of the school is essential to the schools’ effectiveness, the hypothesis is tested that a close kinship between school and parental community causes a positive effect on student outcomes in primary schools. Recent theories regarding the effects of ‘functional communities’ on academic achievement mainly focus on the characteristics of the parental community that surrounds a school. Recognizing, however, that schools differ regarding their responsiveness to the role of parents and other actors around the school, our expectation is that a definition of functional community which comprises interactions between characteristics of the parental network around the school and the governance structure of the school offers a better explanation of variation in student achievement. Based on a national sample of 90 schools for primary education in the Netherlands, our analysis shows that the differences in math achievement for public and priva...

Do Highly Gifted Students Really Have Problems

This study addresses the question whether highly gifted students have particular school-related problems. To answer this question, 4 categories of gifted students are compared, consisting of above-average intelligent students (IQ between 110 – 119), mildly gifted students (IQ between 120 – 129), moderately gifted students (IQ between 130 – 144), and highly gifted students (IQ above 144) with respect to underachievement and underattainment, as well as with respect to their scores on social-emotional and school-related behavior measures. All together, 3,442 students participated. It turns out that moderately and highly gifted students do not have particular problems at all. The category of mildly gifted students, however, could be labeled as a problematic category. Within this category, we found the highest percentage of underachievers and also the highest percentage of students whose school career was unsuccessful.

Effective families, peers and schools. A configurational approach

Our study investigates the impact of different social contests (family, peer groups school) on student outcomes of 5,110 students in Dutch secondary schools. Configuration is used to construct typologies from the intersection of these 3 social contexts of learning. Four empirically based configurations were found. The relative and additional impact of these configurations on cognitive and social outcomes of secondary school students have been analysed. Multilevel results show that certain elements of effective families and effective peer groups contribute to the math performance and school perception of secondary school students. Finally, our assumptions about additional effects of the configurations have been tested.

Interdependency of performance indicators : an empirical study in a categorical school system

Performance indicators can be used to monitor schools, to evaluate national educational policy or to serve as criteria in school effectiveness research. In this paper we examine “added value” scores, constructed by means of multilevel modelling, that measure the relative benefit of attending a given school. Simple aggregate performance indicators are compared with this more complex performance indicator. We investigate the stability of this complex performance indicator across years and we identify sources of instability.

Quality and Equity of European Education

Internationally an increase in attention for institutional related aspects of schooling is observed. Most research has taken place in individual countries. A thorough international comparison of specific institutional effects of schooling could merit important policy implications for individual countries and be useful in that they provide some indication of how the country is performing in comparison to other countries with similar social, economic and educational circumstances (Bishop and Wossmann, 2001; Willms & Somers, 2001). Although a lot has been published about the quality of countries’ education systems it is still not very clear how much is in fact explained by institutional characteristics. Furthermore, multilevel between-country studies focusing on institutional features of education systems are scarce. The objective of this Chapter is to analyse the relative impact of parameters of institutional contexts on quality and equity of schooling systems in general. This bears relevance because students in some education systems do not have the same educational opportunities than in others and this inequality could well be related to variation in institutional contexts. Research should make clear what produces such variations and what factors are related to more equal opportunities for pupils. Another reason is that international comparison of education systems shows that institutional factors seem to explain substantial cross-country variation in student performance (Bishop and Wossmann, 2001). Furthermore, these researchers argue that privately-governed schools are more likely to posses “incentive creating” institutional characteristics and that competition from privately-managed schools within the country’s education system seems to be associated with positive effects on the total quality of the education system.