The Relations Among School Environment Variables and Student Achievement: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach to Effective Schools Research

Foreword

In the year 2000 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a multi-million dollar initiative in the state of Washington to improve student learning in schools. The challenge before school personnel was to bring their schools and classroom instruction in line with attributes believed to be important for student success. During the first year of the initiative the Washington School Research Center was involved in the baseline assessment of grantee schools in relation to these school and classroom attributes. The data from that assessment are used in this report.

Specifically, this study "examines how constructivist teaching and the organization of the learning environment relate to student achievement." These constructs are based on the foundation's attributes of high achievement schools and the evaluation design for the Washington State projects. The researchers used structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the relationships among school and teaching attributes and student achievement in reading, writing and mathematics as measured by the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL).

Their analyses show a strong positive relationship between school attributes and constructivist teaching. Specifically, "Schools that emphasize parental and community involvement and that have teaching staff who model and expect responsible behavior and mutual respect are more likely to have staff who use constructivist teaching methods." The analyses also show that "school environment and partnerships affect student achievement indirectly through constructivist teaching." Further, constructivist teaching "appears to have a meaningful influence on student achievement" as measured by the WASL.

But these findings also show that there are "structural relationships" among many school and classroom factors and student achievement; that is, these attributes appear to work together to explain student achievement. This suggests that maximizing student achievement is not just a result of improved teaching, or of partnerships, or of focusing on respect and responsibility. Rather, these elements appear to be a part of a larger environmental shift in the school, one that has sometimes been referred to as "reinvention."

These results will be of particular interest to the foundation and its grantees, but the results are equally instructive to all Washington schools that are attempting to meet the state's expectations for reform and to have all their students meet higher academic expectations.

Jeffrey T. Fouts, Ed.D. Executive Director
Washington School Research Center
Lynnwood, WA

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