Improving education through assessment, innovation, and evaluation
OUTPUT TYPE: Monograph (Book)
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2006
TITLE AUTHOR(S): H.Braun, A.Kanjee, E.Bettinger, M.Kremer
KEYWORDS: EDUCATIONAL REFORM, EVALUATION, INNOVATION
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 4031
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/6609
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/6609
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2006
TITLE AUTHOR(S): H.Braun, A.Kanjee, E.Bettinger, M.Kremer
KEYWORDS: EDUCATIONAL REFORM, EVALUATION, INNOVATION
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 4031
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/6609
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/6609
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
How is progress toward educational goals, both local and global, measured? Although assessment is most often seen as a tool to measure the progress of a single student, it also allows individuals, communities, and countries to track the quality of schools and educational systems. In theory, publicly available data enable policymakers to craft effective policies and students and parents to better choose among educational options. As Henry Braun and Anil Kanjee note, the potential benefits of assessment are not easy to capture, as they must overcome a number of significant implementation challenges and political and financial obstacles. The authors review promising national and international efforts and offer recommendations for creating and implementing assessments in developing countries. Testing offers a means to track the outcomes of schools and educational systems. But how can education reformers identify the practices that led to improved or worsened outcomes? There are countless and complex factors at work even within a single classroom. Deciding whether an educational innovation is responsible for a change in student outcomes is difficult at best, yet essential for efficiently implementing the most effective educational programs. As Eric Bettinger and Michael Kremer each discuss, one reliable means of evaluating the effects of a program or intervention-namely, randomized controlled experimentation-is now finding use in education. These experiments make possible valid comparisons among pedagogical techniques and systems of management because randomization establishes equivalent participant and non-participant groups for comparison. Randomized controlled experiments can, therefore, produce the most credible evaluation of programs, including their cost-effectiveness. Bettinger explains why experiments such as that used to study the school-based health program remain underutilized though they provide highly credible results. Kremer reviews the findings from randomized evaluations to determine low-cost means of increasing enrollment. As the research of these authors makes clear, with more reliable information from such experiments, education reformers can focus efforts and resources on the programs that have been found to be most effective.-
Related Research Outputs:
- Conference report: 26th International Association for Educational Assessment
- Researching mathematics education in South Africa: perspectives, practices and possibilities
- Assessment and education quality in South Africa
- Uprooting bad mathematical performance: pilot study into roots of problems
- Education and democracy in South Africa
- Book review: Harber, C. (2000) State of transition: post-apartheid educational reform in South Africa (Monographs in international education) Walligford, Oxford: Symposium Books. ISBN 1 873927 19 3
- Non governmental organisations and education in South Africa
- Deracialisation & migration of learners in South African schools
- Opening the doors of learning: where is the principal?: a position paper
- Globalization and the social construction of reality: affirming or unmasking the "inevitable"?
- Education in retrospect: policy and implementation since 1990
- Introduction
- Policy ambiguity and slippage: higher education under new state, 1994-2001
- Formative evaluation and monitoring of curriculum 2005 implementation in Gauteng: workshop for educators & principles
- Improving learning in South African schools: the QLP baseline evaluation
- Evaluation of the Mahlahle project
- Assessment modeling initiative project: quarterly report: 1 March - 30 June
- Report back on trip abroad: 27th annual International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 6-11 May
- HSRC roundtable entitled: an education policy retrospective, 1990-2000: analysing the process of policy implementation and reform
- Deracialisation of schools in South Africa: challenges and implications for educators