School Effectiveness: The Case of Israeli Primary Schools

• In Event: Promoting Excellence and School Effectiveness

Proposal

This objective of this research is twofold: First, to analyze the relationships between school effectiveness, as expressed in the improvement of eighth grade students’ academic achievements, and school structure, i.e., the “continuous structure” of eight-year primary schools (grades 1-8) vs. the “split structure” of six-year primary schools (grades 1-6) followed by middle school (grades 7-9); and second, to analyze the relationships between school effectiveness and school features (e.g., ethnicity, socio-economic index, rural vs. central location, class size, prior achievements, and per-student allocation) and to measure their contribution to the explained variation in school effectiveness.
The hypothesis underlying this research is that the effectiveness of schools with a continuous structure will be higher than that of schools with a split structure. It is further hypothesized that the effectiveness of Hebrew-speaking schools located in urban central locations where students are of mostly affluent backgrounds, with smaller class size, and higher per-student allocations, will be higher compared with their counterparts.
The sample encompasses 120 schools, represented equally by 40 eight-year primary schools (grades 1-8), 40 six-year primary schools (grades 1-6), and 40 middle schools (grades 7-9). Datasets were retrieved from the Israeli Ministry of Education website. The method of analysis is quantitative using regression models.
The research findings show that the effectiveness of continuous-structured schools is equal to that of split-structured schools. In addition, students' prior achievements and socio-economic background contribute most significantly to the explained variation in school effectiveness.

Authors

• Zehorit Dadon-Golan, Hemdat college of education and Bar Ilan University

• Iris BenDavid -Hadar, Bar Ilan University