Styles Methods Questions, Essay Example

Evaluation is critical to the progress of all schools. How would you organize the evaluative progress for your school programs, student accomplishment, supervisory accomplishment, and parental involvement?

School evaluation has to be performed at different levels and, as a result, create a comprehensive picture of school progress. First of all, every school has to evaluate the application of current school program. It should be clearly understood that school program evaluation is different from student progress evaluation; its main function is to compare the outcome of a particular program to the desired or predicted results. The evaluation should be performed in accordance with federal and state requirements and the tasks initially set for the program. The evaluation process will involve gathering quantitative and qualitative data about student performance within the framework of the program in the form of varied testing and verbal assessment of progress on the part of teachers and students. It is essential to analyze and compare student progress at the launch of the program and during its long-term maintenance. The results should also be compared to those of their counterparts in the district, to national and standards in the area, and to past performance at the same site.

Although testing is part and parcel of student accomplishment evaluation, I would put greater emphasis on descriptive evaluation – the method in which teachers and pupils use words to describe and summarize their progress. I believe that this method makes school environment more personal and puts greater responsibility on both teachers and students in their mutual relationships. Moreover, this method prevents students from developing a habit of being always assessed in figures and makes them think in more varied categories.

Supervisory accomplishment evaluation can be performed in forms of questionnaires and will involve comparing the results against national and state standards.

Finally, it will be logical to evaluate parental involvement on the basis of activities requiring such involvement (for example, parents may be asked to keep a record of extra-curriculum reading of their child in primary school). It is critical to consider the level of parental involvement if a child reveals signs of home-rooted psychological problems. In this case, it is the responsibility of a school psychologist to involve parents and to evaluate the progress.

Decision making may take many forms. Discuss the styles methods you would employ to insure that your decisions would be of quality and be acceptable and implemented in your organization.

In my opinion, decision-making is most likely to be successful when it is a collaborative effort of the whole organization. In this respects, I vote for “organized democracy” which would involve an effective system of collecting opinions of school teachers, students, and parents (meetings, discussion boards, questionnaires, correspondence etc.). However, I would like my school to have a charismatic and committed leader who would make final decisions having analyzed collected information. The combination of respect towards every member of the organization (freedom of expression and consideration of opinions), effective management in enforcing the decisions and inspiring leadership which would convey school mission is the formula of success for a school.

Discuss norm/criterion referenced testing and how you would use both to change instruction for children.

Norm-referenced testing measures individual’s achievements as compared to the sample (the average result considered as a norm). This method of testing presumably raises competitiveness between students since they are compared to each other. To avoid the unpleasant emotional outcomes of such testing (the feeling of falling behind the class etc.), I would only use norm-referenced testing when in need to evaluate the effectiveness of a particular teaching program. Each student is an individual and if he or she does not succeed in a particular framework, it means the fault is with the system, not with a child who might need a completely different approach.

Criterion-referenced testing evaluates a student’s progress in comparison to his / her own previous results and seems ideal for pure assessment of the level of material acquisition. That is why I would make extensive use of testing techniques based on this approach in school. It seems to me less traumatic for children.