Pupil attitude data have frequently been utilised in school effectiveness and improvement research to examine aspects of a school's educational processes, culture and ethos. However, a related approach is based on the belief that the views and attitudes of pupils are important outcomes of schooling in their own right, in addition to academic or vocational achievement. The rationale for this approach is that schools and teachers can have a positive influence on pupils' attitudes in a range of important areas that are central to the overall aims of schooling. These aims encompass enhancing pupils' capacity for lifelong and independent learning and positive attitudes to education, behaviour and self-concept as well as promoting vocational aspirations and civic values. This article addresses a subset of these aims, specifically in terms of pupils' attitudes to school, the learning context, self-concept and behaviour. This article also highlights the various issues and implications raised by measuring and using pupil attitudes in Scottish schools for the purpose of school self-evaluation and illustrations are drawn from the findings of the Improving School Effectiveness project funded by SOEID. Briefly, the results showed that generally both primary and secondary pupils' reported attitudes were more positive than negative. However, differences between schools in terms of the extent of positive (or negative) attitude outcomes were identified and these differences appear to be greater at the primary level than at the secondary level. The findings are discussed in relation to the development of approaches to school self-evaluation in the UK.

Classroom tests from nine eighth‐grade mathematics teachers were collected from the 2003–04 and 2005–06 school years. These years represent one school year prior to the eighth‐grade Ohio Achievement Test (OAT) in mathematics being implemented and the year after the eighth‐grade OAT in mathematics was implemented, respectively. In addition, teachers were interviewed to determine factors that influence classroom assessment practices. Classroom assessment data were compared between the two years, and interview data were examined, to investigate the impact that the new state test was having on classroom assessment practices. An average of 87% of teachers' classroom assessment items were at the lowest depth of knowledge level during both years. Teachers relied heavily on curriculum materials for their test items, and these items tended to only assess students ability to recall basic facts or perform straightforward procedures. The presence of a state test did not entice teachers to assess students at higher depth of knowledge levels.

The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) explicitly states many specific theorems for students to prove across multiple domains (i.e., congruence, similarity, circles, and coordinates) in high school geometry. This study examined five high school geometry textbooks for how they approached proof of 17 theorems stated in the congruence domain focused on lines and angles, triangles, and parallelograms. Results showed that although textbooks provided 75 student opportunities to prove these theorems, no textbook provided student opportunities to prove all 17.Textbooks rarely had students write proofs from general conditional statements, and instead typically provided consistent hard scaffolding including the given, what to prove, and a diagram for all proof opportunities. Some of the textbooks used novel scaffolding such as partially completed proofs, flowchart proofs, second proofs, and hints in the back of the book. Textbooks need to continue shifting more responsibility to students proving the CCSSM theorems by incorporating more diverse scaffolding along with a process for removing the scaffolding as student learning progresses.

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