Education Benchmarks

The School District Effectiveness project measures the effectiveness of school districts in Massachusetts. Put another way, the project measures the value that school districts add to their students' learning experience.

The method was developed by Robert Gaudet, a senior policy researcher at the University of Massachusetts' Donahue Institute, a public service think tank. Dr. Gaudet earned is doctorate in education at the University's Amherst campus and has been a longtime and respected education innovator and consultant. His children attended Boston public schools for their entire K-12 careers. He is one of the founders of the Renaissance Charter School in Boston.

The demographic model does the following:

Develops a profile of school districts' demography.

Uses the demographic profile to project a likely average test score for each school districts' public school students. (This is done because demography correlates strongly with test scores.)

Compares each district's PROJECTED test score to the ACTUAL score.

Districts that have test scores higher than had been predicted for their demographic profile are considered effective. The larger the gap between projected scores and actual scores determines the level of effectiveness. Districts that overperform their demography may have valuable lessons to teach similar districts about how to improve learning.

To create each demographic profile the studies combine six conditions:

The impact of these characteristics on student achievement as measured on standardized tests is evaluated using several statistical techniques including principal component analysis and multiple regression.

The methodology is designed to promote the following results:

Creation of a rational measurement of the effectiveness of public school systems in Massachusetts.

Identification the best practices in highly effective public school districts.

Distribution of information on those best practices to demographically similar school districts