Selected School Variables and the Achievement Related Activities of Shared Decision-Making Teams

This study investigated the extent to which school characteristics would interfere with or enhance a shared decision making (SDM) team's ability to address issues of academic achievement as mandated by New York State. A group of 108 SDM team chairpersons in New York State public high schools completed surveys about school characteristics and issues that SDM teams address. The data were sorted and broken into quartiles according to school characteristic: (1) school performance outcomes, as measured by the percentage of Regents diplomas awarded; (2) socioeconomic status (SES), as measured by the Census Poverty Index; and (3) school size, as measured by enrollment. The data for the top and bottom quartiles were examined in a qualitative manner. Data analysis indicated that, overall, groups of teams addressed similar issues at similar rates. There were no differences between top and bottom groups of teams on academic issues in high and low achievement outcome schools, in high and.low SES districts, and in large and small schools. One exception was the extent to which SDM teams in low performance schools were better at identifying strategies to measure the impact on student achievement than were SDM teams in high performance schools. (Contains 22 references). (SM) * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document.