Assessment, League Tables and School Effectiveness: Consider the Issues and ‘Let’s Get Real’!

Abstract

Current policy activity related to ‘outcomes-based’ educational performance indicators and its link with growing demands for accountability, standards monitoring, target-setting, benchmarking and school effectiveness is widespread – in Australia and internationally. Within this context, the present paper highlights the limitations of using performance indicators based on test or examination scores as accountability measures at the school- and system-level, or indeed, as measures of student learning outcomes. The issues raised are presented for consideration, stressing the need for caution in generating and publishing potentially invalid and misleading information, especially in the typically published form of ‘league tables’ consisting of schools’ raw, ‘ability-adjusted’, or ‘value-added’ average achievement scores, with the risk of generating both individual and institutional harm. As a means of at least minimising such problems, the paper outlines a code of ethics for the publication of educational performance indicators along the lines proposed by Goldstein and Myers (1996), and Myers and Goldstein (1996).