2018 Chapters (Layout Features)

Using Hierarchical Growth Modeling to Promote District Systematic Improvement in Ohio and Texas

Bowers, Alex J.; Ni, Xinyu; Esswein, Jennifer

The purpose of this study is to apply hierarchical linear growth modelling to district demographic and effectiveness data in the U.S. states of Ohio and Texas to identify districts that are significantly outperforming or underperforming their demographic and resource characteristics from the entire population of districts in a state. The study focuses on administrative panel data for the years 2006-2012 for all districts in Ohio (n=608) and 2005-2011 for all districts in Texas (n=1028). Our findings indicate that: 1) Multiple district demographic variables and financial expenditures, such as enrollment, student ethnicity, district location, and general and school administration expenditures per pupil have a significant relationship to growth in district academic achievement; 2) we identified 32 significantly outperforming districts in Texas and 15 districts in Ohio; 3) we compare this identification system with state accountability indicators through a quadrant plot to provide a new framework for site selection in district effectiveness research, which has important implications for the policy and practice of re-envisioning school district effectiveness.