The school effectiveness perspective for assessing the quality of education

Abstract

For many years, educational research reinforced the assumption that student's chances of academic achievement were strongly determined by conditions outside the educational system. This conclusion left little to do to the school, because it seriously limited its potentialities to positively influence the academic success of its students. As far as we are concerned, the emphasis on the measurement and evaluation of the levels of learning achieved by the students, on the efficiency of the educational system and its unique educational institutions, schools, has led us to recognize an important terrain of research: that of school effectiveness. Based on this notion, the text presents a model of factors that tries to reflect the main lines of investigation and findings pertinent to the concept of school effectiveness, giving account of the variables of the effectiveness of the teaching, that is to say those that have expression at the level of the classroom.