Abstract
Current federal government policy initiatives in Aboriginal education and social welfare reform are based on assumptions about the relationship between increased attendance and increased student performance on standardized tests. There are empirical assumptions underlying these policy interventions and their accompanying public debates. Our aim here is to empirically explore the relationships between patterns of student attendance and patterns of student achievement in schools with significant cohorts of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students at the school level. Based on an analysis of the publicly available data reported on the ‘MySchool’ website, we find that reforms and policies around attendance have not and are unlikely to generate patterns of improved achievement. Questions about the rationale and rhetoric of government policy focused at the school level as opposed to the need to focus on pedagogy and curriculum are discussed.
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Notes
The same logic underlies teachers’ and teachers’ unions’ stated concerns about ‘appropriate’ student behavior as necessary prior to any improvement in student outcomes, institutional and teacher quality.
Retrieved from the ACARA website 27/9/12: http://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national_report_on_schooling/student_engagement/attendance.html.
All multi-level models were conducted using MlWin 2.25.
It is also possible to model the interaction of ICSEA, Remote and ATSI by including interaction effect parameters into the model. Doing so essentially lowers the level of effect of the Remote categories while increasing the overall effects of the others two – with some overall improvement in the model fit statistics; however, this also adds another seven parameters to the model (ICSEA x P; ICSEA x R; ICSEA x VR; ICSEA x ATSI; ATSI x P; ATSI x R; ATSI x VR). For parsimony these interactions have not been included here.
Data from ACARA were only available for gain cohorts within one school, consequently schools which do not cover either end of the gain cohort year range are not included (e.g. all high schools in Queensland do not include Year 7, and thus do not have ACARA gain scores by school).
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by funding from the Commonwealth Government, Department of Employment, Education and Workplace Relations for the evaluation of the SSLC project, 2009–2013. The authors acknowledge the ideas and support of the research team: Courtney Cazden, Rhonda Coopes, Val Klenowski, John Lester, Shelley MacDonald, Jean Phillips, Pamela Theroux, Malia Villegas, and Annette Woods.
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Ladwig, J.G., Luke, A. Does improving school level attendance lead to improved school level achievement? An empirical study of indigenous educational policy in Australia. Aust. Educ. Res. 41, 171–194 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-013-0131-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-013-0131-y