A new study examining why similar California schools vary widely in student achievement produced some surprising results: Involved parents and well-behaved youngsters do not appear to have a major effect on how well elementary students perform on standardized tests.
But four other factors seemed to count a lot more, at least when combined in schools, according to EdSource, an independent group that studies state education issues.
The study of lower-income schools found that the strongest elements in high-performing schools are linking lessons closely to state academic standards, ensuring there are enough textbooks and other teaching materials, carefully and regularly analyzing student performance and putting a high priority on student achievement. The study's authors say that these criteria show that poverty and other challenges need not keep students from doing well.
"Similar Students, Different Results," to be released today, was headed by EdSource executive director Trish Williams and Stanford professor Michael Kirst. The study focused on 257 public schools with substantial numbers of low-income, minority students. Typically, 40% of them were still learning English. Yet these schools' scores on the California Academic Performance Index varied by up to 250 points on a scale of 200 to 1000. Researchers promised the schools in the study anonymity.
The state assigns a single API score to a school based on how its students perform on several standardized tests. The score measures progress toward the state's goal of 800 for each school and is widely used as an indicator of school quality.
The study provided an unusual look at how some schools, despite the challenges their students face, manage to improve, even without spending additional money to lengthen the instructional day or hire more teachers, according to one of the lead researchers.
Some of the findings seem to fly in the face of widely held beliefs that parental involvement is among the most important reasons for school success and that academic achievement depends largely on a family's education and income level.
"Lots of people believe that demographics determines achievement," Williams said. "This shows that is not true."
The study also found that enforcing high student behavior standards did not have much of an effect.
Williams noted that some of the highest-performing schools in the study had some of the most challenging demographics; 19 of the 44 schools with the highest scores are in urban neighborhoods in or near Los Angeles.
