Promoting Rigor-in-Practice through School Self-Evaluation: A Middle School’s Experience with Model Development, Implementation, and Evaluation

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Abstract

For years, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has demanded that our nation pay ever closer attention to school evaluation (Schmidt, 2008; Stanik, 2007). Never before have the stakes of evaluation been so high. School and district jobs, funding, and local control of educational policy and practice are all more directly jeopardized by unfavorable evaluations than at any other time in our country’s history (Schmidt, 2008; Stanik, 2007). These high-stakes consequences demand that educators be evaluation experts, fully prepared to take part in the debate about U.S. education and school evaluation.

Choosing which objectives are evaluated and which are not is a particularly contentious point in this debate, especially when considering the unintended and often negative impact these decisions can have on schools. High-stakes NCLB school evaluation has successfully focused national attention on what’s being evaluated—math and reading scores, initially— but may have done so only at the expense of other top priorities (Stanik, 2007). Examples of these important, but now frequently overlooked priorities, include efforts to meet the broader developmental needs of the whole child, and school social services designed to support struggling or disadvantaged students.

Although many examples show that heightened attention to NCLB evaluation has directly contributed to some schools' redoubling of their efforts and successfully improving student reading and math scores, many equally valid examples can be provided in which focus on NCLB outcomes has resulted in a diminishment of other critical parts of the curriculum or school services (Stanik, 2007). Many of these priorities may have been rightly determined to be outside the scope of national evaluation efforts but are still deserving of adequate attention and resources from local stakeholders.

This article describes one middle school’s efforts to use model building and school self-evaluation to hold itself accountable for its own priorities. These priorities were established by local administrators, teachers, and students, in addition to those established by NCLB. Further, this article discusses this school’s efforts to make evaluation a more valuable and meaningful part of the work of all school professionals—particularly their efforts to use evaluation to enhance outcomes related to the whole student—and to develop a strong “rigor-in-practice” culture within the school. It concludes with a discussion about the role of evaluation in middle schools and recommendations for evaluators interested in implementing similar practices.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-15
Number of pages15
JournalRMLE Online
Volume37
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2013

EGS Disciplines

  • Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research

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