Interaction Effects of Principal Participation in the West Virginia Principals' Academy on School Outcome Measures.

Despite uncertainty about implementation models, program assessment methods, and application of effective schools research to varied school settings, increasing numbers of schools and school districts have initiated effective schools improvement programs since the early 1970s. Because of the considerable resources committed yearly to management development reform initiatives across the country, studies of interaction effects between such training and school outcome measures are important. The study summarized in this paper exposed experimental group school principals to specific professional development experiences provided at the 1985 West Virginia Principals' Academy, then attempted to determine if there was a significant difference between experimental and control group schools' experience on: (1) three academic achievement measures; (2) attendance rates; and (3) dropout rates. Several hypotheses were proposed concerning the performance of experimental and control groups on the various outcome measures. A quasi-experimental investigation method and a Non-randomized Control Group Pretest-Posttest design were used. Residualized school outcome data on each of the dependent variables were compared using one-tailed T tests to test the hypotheses. No significant difference was determined between experimental and control group performance on all outcome measures. However, elementary and low socioeconomic status elementary experimental groups demonstrated significantly greater gains than did control groups in total reading and total basic skills. The study involved 25 elementary and 10 secondary schools in the experimental sample, with a similar set of schools in the control group. Numerous appendices contain Principals' Academy follow-up surveys and data tables. (157 references) (MLH)