Universal Journal of Educational Research Vol. 4(9), pp. 2049 - 2054
DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2016.040915
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A Pathway to Educational Accountability: The Relationship between Effective School Characteristics and Student Achievement

Yurdagül Günal ^1,*, R. Nükhet Demirtaşlı ^2
1 Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Educational Sciences, Karadeniz Technical University, Turkey
² Department of Measurement and Evaluation in Education, Faculty of Educational Sciences, Ankara University, Turkey

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to determine perceptions of secondary school students towards effectiveness of their school in terms of effective school characteristics such as 'Secure and Regular Environment', 'High Academic Expectations', 'Instructional Leadership', 'Learning Opportunities', 'Monitoring School Learnings' and 'Positive School-Parent Relationship', and to determine the predictive power of such perceptions for student achievement (in terms of year-end academic average grade). In this study, the data on student perceptions of school effectiveness and student achievement were collected by 'The Scale for Effective School (SFES)' which is developed by Günal [1]. The validity evidences on SFES were obtained by explanatory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis methods. The CFA yielded good fit indices (RMSEA_(0.042)) in terms of construct validity of SFES. These results revealed that the measuring construct of the scale is statistically significant and consistent. As an evidence of internal reliability of the SFES, Cronbach's alpha coefficient for total scale was computed as α=0.91. For the main study, participants (n=4472) were comprised of students attending the grades from 5 to 8 in 13 secondary schools in the centre of Trabzon during the 2012-2013 academic year. The schools were selected according to the criteria of transportation convenience. Collected data by SFES were analyzed by multivariate regression analysis method. According to the participants' perceptions, the most effective school dimension was found as 'Instructional Leadership'. The results of the multivariate regression analysis reveal that variables (Instructional Leadership, High Academic Expectations, Monitoring School Learnings, Positive School-Home Relationship, Learning Opportunities offered to all students) of effective schools all together explain 27 % of students' year-end academic achievement scores.

KEYWORDS
Effective School, Educational Accountability, Student Achievement

Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Yurdagül Günal , R. Nükhet Demirtaşlı , "A Pathway to Educational Accountability: The Relationship between Effective School Characteristics and Student Achievement," Universal Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 4, No. 9, pp. 2049 - 2054, 2016. DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2016.040915.

(b). APA Format:
Yurdagül Günal , R. Nükhet Demirtaşlı (2016). A Pathway to Educational Accountability: The Relationship between Effective School Characteristics and Student Achievement. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 4(9), 2049 - 2054. DOI: 10.13189/ujer.2016.040915.