Schools make a difference: Evidence, criticism, and new directions.

Examines recent research on school effectiveness and emphasizes how variation in school processes affect student achievement. Although the review indicates that there is meaningful variation across schools in student achievement, it is argued that there are conceptual and methodological limitations of the research, such as its atheoretical nature and the instability of outcomes, that must be considered when findings are used for policy and program development. New directions for school research are discussed, including the need to study a wide range of student outcomes other than student performance on standardized achievement tests and the need to identify how classroom and school processes combine to create an effective learning environment. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)