Date of Award
2008
Degree Type
Dissertation
First Advisor
Robert D. Felner
Abstract
Current educational accountability systems, which are based primarily on school-aggregate and student subgroup results of annual achievement testing, fail to address two fundamental and interrelated issues at the school level: the identification of opportunity-to-learn (OTL) conditions that impact how students perform and the measurement of these conditions for longitudinal school improvement. Three factors which emerge from review of literature as influential OTL conditions are instructional quality, parent involvement, and school climate. A reliable method for determining the existing levels of these OTL factors in schools is sought as a means of gauging school progress over time that does not depend strictly on test scores. Learning support indicators (LSI) were computed annually in Rhode Island to be used as a data-based tool for school improvement planning. On a base-100 scale, these composite scores detail a school's conditions and practices in instruction, parent involvement, and school climate. The LSI are compiled from student, teacher, and parent High Performance Learning Communities Assessment data and strive to provide an overview of the contexts in which students learn and achieve. Eighteen sets of hierarchical linear model analyses were conducted to assess the levels of association between the school-level LSI and student achievement. Individual and school-mean socioeconomic status were also considered in the analyses. Reading and mathematics achievement data from an average of 26,500 students per year (grades 3-5) were analyzed with LSI and socioeconomic data from an average of 197 schools per year. Three consecutive years were studied to determine whether the findings were able to be generalized across years. Findings suggest that the LSI show statistically significant school-level effects on student achievement across years, at all grade levels, and in both reading and mathematics. Additionally, student and school-mean socioeconomic status were also shown to be significant predictors of achievement across the years, grade levels, and subject areas of the study. The marked consistency of the multi-year findings provide evidence that trends involving socioeconomic status and the learning support indicators exist in Rhode Island elementary schools.
Recommended Citation
Burns, Amy L., "The opportunity to learn: Identification and measurement of school conditions that contextualize student achievement" (2008). Open Access Dissertations. Paper 2260.
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss/2260
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