The Effective School Districts Annual Reports

The first analysis of school district effectiveness came out in February of 1999 and evaluated the 1998 MCAS in terms of district demography. The second report was released in February 2000 and considered the 1999 MCAS. The central tool of these analyses is the Effectiveness Index methodology that examines the relationship between selected community demographic characteristics and educational outcomes. These characteristics include: average education level, average income, poverty rate, single-parent status, language spoken, and percentage of school-age population enrolled in private schools. These variables were chosen because they correlate with achievement and because the education literature identifies them as connected to academic performance. (See Appendix F for information on the Effectiveness Index.)

Researchers ranging from James Coleman in the 1960s to James Comer in the 1990s have demonstrated that community demographics play a major role in how well children do in school. The Effectiveness Index model provides a means of isolating the role played by community characteristics concerning student performance on statewide educational assessments. With a community's achievement context factored into its test results, it is possible to know how much value school systems add to demographic expectations. In the absence of a methodology to control for the demographic diversity of Massachusetts, listing MCAS scores primarily demonstrates the relative advantage or disadvantage that community characteristics bring to students. Any raw ranking order of MCAS scores reflects district demography much more than it represents anything else. A sorting of MCAS results would tell us more about local real estate values or the percentage of SUV ownership in a community than it would about school quality.

The Effectiveness Index identifies school districts that add value to the learning readiness of their students as indicated by higher-than-demographically-predicted test scores. Identifying such systems is a first step to determining if they are indeed providing more effective educational services to their students. Identifying best practices in effective systems that are demographically similar to less effective systems may help those systems improve their school services.