The quality of k-12 education has been a major concern in the nation for years. School systems, just like many other social networks, appear to have a hierarchical structure. Understanding this structure could be the key to better evaluate student performance and improve school quality. Many researches have been focusing on detecting hierarchical structure by using hierarchical clustering algorithms. Compared to existing methods, we design an interaction-based similarity measure to accomplish hierarchical clustering in order to detect hierarchical structures in social networks (e.g. school district networks). This method uses a Multi-agent System for it is based on agent interactions. With the network structure detected, we also build a model, which is inspired by the MAXQ algorithm, to decompose funding policy task into subtask and then evaluate these subtasks by using funding distribution policies from past years and looking for possible relationships between student performances and funding policies. For experiment, we use real school data from Bexar county’s 15 school districts. The first result shows that our interaction based method is able to

School principals have a significant impact on the academic achievement of their students (Leithwood et al., 2004; Marzano et al., 2005). This important responsibility is magnified by the fact that principals have a job that is increasingly complex and demanding (Copland, 2001; West et al., 2010). Recently, researchers and educators have voiced concern over whether current programs for principal preparation are sufficient to prepare school leaders for their challenging jobs (Hess & Kelly, 2005, 2007). When individuals are dealing with demanding circumstances, such as those encountered in a stressful job with high accountability, the self-efficacy beliefs of the individuals involved are a key factor in performance and success. Research is needed to better understand the self-efficacy beliefs of schools principals, especially how these beliefs are formed and sustained through professional development experiences. This mixed-methods study focused on the perceptions and sources of the self-efficacy beliefs of elementary school principals whose schools had demonstrated high levels of student achievement in comparison to similar schools. In the quantitative phase of the study, 40 high-achieving elementary schools were identified through analysis of

Studies by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact ScholarWorks@waldenu.edu.

Purpose – The purpose of this study was to examine the independent effects of principal background, training and experience as well as teacher academic qualifications on school proficiency growth through time. Design- We analyzed the entire population of all elementary and middle schools in the state of Illinois, n=3,154 schools, from 2000-2001 through 2005-2006 using growth mixture modeling. We examined growth at the school level in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards on the Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT), analyzing separate models for Chicago and non-Chicago schools. Findings- Our results suggest that there are two statistically significantly different latent school proficiency trajectory subgroups through the six-year time period, one high and one low, for both Chicago and non-Chicago schools. In addition, our models suggest that teacher academic qualifications, principal training, principal experience as a principal and an assistant principal, and experience of the principal as a teacher previously in their schools are significantly related to school proficiency growth over time, dependent upon school context. Implications – Recent studies on the independent effects of principal experience, training and teacher academic qualifications have shown inconsistent results on school achievement growth. We demonstrate that principal training and background may have an effect on school-level proficiency score growth. Originality – This study is one of the first to examine statistically different proficiency growth trajectories using an entire state-wide dataset over a long-term, six-year timeframe.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. This electronic document was made available from www.rand.org as a public service of the RAND Corporation.