A Between-Grade-Levels Approach to the Investigation of the Absolute Effects of Schooling on Achievement

(2017) 'The contribution of schooling to learning gains of pupils in Years 1 to 6.', School eectiveness and school improvement., 28 (3). pp. 374-405. Further information on publisher's website: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. By means of a regression-discontinuity approach with multiple cut-off points, the effects of age and schooling on learning gains in English primary schools are estimated. The analyses relate to over 3,500 pupils in 20, predominantly independently funded, schools and focus on 4 different learning outcomes. In order to take into account delayed and accelerated school careers, an intention-to-treat analysis was applied. The findings reveal substantial effects of schooling, which in line with previous studies in English primary education account for about 40% of the total learning gains. The year-to-year gains show a declining trend as the school career progresses. The analyses produce evidence for both decreasing effects of schooling on achievement and a weakening age-achievement relationship in the higher years of primary education. ARTICLE HISTORY

Section: Discussion Of the Main Findingssupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The contribution of schooling to learning gains of pupils in Years 1 to 6

Luyten

Merrell

Tymms

2017

“…Research on the stability of descriptions of schools over time was done by Bosker (1990), Thomas, Sammons, Mortimore, and Smees (1997), Kane and Staiger (2002), and Downey, von Hippel, and Hughes (2006). For stability reasons, we may work with the achievement levels of successive cohorts (Cahan & Davis, 1987;Gray, Jesson, Goldstein, Hedger, & Rasbash, 1995;Luyten & Veldkamp, 2008;Opdenakker & Van Damme, 2006). In this article, we will argue that because of the instability of a school's output it is necessary to use data on several (let us say 3) school years.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reliability and validity in measuring the value added of schools

Grift¹

2009

Instability in the school population between school entrance and school leaving is not ''just a problem of missing data'' but often the visible result of the educational problems in some schools and is, therefore, not merely to be treated as missing data but as indicator for the quality of educational processes. Even the most superior value-added model with corrections for premeasurement, gender, intelligence, age, socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds of students is only valid for the detection of schools with the highest raw scores and the highest learning gains, but it is a very moderate predictor for the detection of schools with the lowest amount of students that lag behind and a bad predictor for the equity and efficiency of schools.

“…We focus on these relationships using an ''added year of schooling'' in reading and math as our primary school-level outcomes (Luyten, 2006). Our choice to explain added-year effects is based on preliminary EER suggesting this may be a promising outcome (e.g., Cahan & Cohen, 1989;Cahan & Davis, 1987;Kyriakides & Luyten, 2009;Luyten, Tymms, & Jones, 2009). This approach uses a regression-discontinuity (RD) design to express an absolute schooling effect.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Examining relationships among elementary schools' contexts, leadership, instructional practices, and added-year outcomes: a regression discontinuity approach

Heck

Moriyama

2010

This study proposes and tests a multilevel structural model of school context, composition, and school leadership on school instructional practices and outcomes in elementary schools in a western state in the United States. We focus on direct and indirect relationships implied in our proposed model using an ''added year of schooling'' in reading and math as our primary school-level outcomes. Added-year effects, which result from a regression discontinuity design, represent a relatively new approach for describing how school factors influence outcomes. Our results suggest that, net of context and composition factors, improvement-focused school leadership directly affected subsequent school instructional practices and, in turn, instructional practices affected addedyear outcomes. We discuss the findings in terms of their theoretical and practical implications for conducting further educational effectiveness research.