As stated previously (see Why), the  accountability purpose begs the question: Accountable for what? The Educational Review answers this question by focusing on what matters most to stakeholders of the Cree School Board: student success and the provision of quality education to youth, adult and post-secondary students.	Who?
	Why?
	What?
	How?
	Ethical Guidelines
	Publications

 

 

The Results Chain

Student success is the key result sought by any school system.  A result is something that happens which we can either measure or describe. One result often leads to another, a sequence that is called a results chain. For the sake of clarity, we call short-term results outputs, medium-term results outcomes, and longer-term ones impact.

Results occur because of some action the Board has undertaken. The Educational Review is as much concerned with what the Board does as it is with the results it achieves.  Taken together, these two aspects define the performance of the Board: the extent to which it achieves results and operates in accordance with its vision and purposes.

The performance of an organization such as a school board is directly related to all of the factors that determine its ability, or capacity, to deliver services and achieve results. Therefore this evaluation will also look at the structures, systems, resources of the Board, and any other related elements, that enable it to perform, as well as any conditions that facilitate or inhibit performance.

As illustrated below, the results-chain thus extends from conditions, capacity and operational performance to short, medium and long term results.

 

Operational Performance è Results-Based Performance Capacity Short-Term Results (Outputs) è Medium-Term Results (Outcomes) è Long-Term Results (Impact) Conditions

 

Performance Themes

Six performance themes have been chosen to guide the Educational Review. They begin with student results and move out from there:

è student results (youth);                         è classroom instruction;                                     è student services;                                                 è school support for learning;                                                             è home and community support for learning; and finally                                                                         è school board support for learning.

We have adopted a similar approach for the evaluation of results and services for adult students and students enrolled in post-secondary institutions.

 

The School Board & its Major Sub-Units

The School Board is a large organization that is made up of several sub-units. For purposes of this Review, we are first concerned with the units that provide services to students: schools; vocational and continuing education centres; and post-secondary education offices; We will then look at other units of the Board which support the provision of services to students, namely: the Council of Commissioners and general administration; the Office of the Supervisor of Schools; Educational Services; Continuing Education; and Administrative Services (Human Resources, Finance, Material Resources & Information Technologies).

 

Evaluation Questions & 'Objects'

The content of the Educational Review - what we evaluate - is first determined by the nature and purpose of the exercise, in this case, an evaluation of organizational performance and capacity as described above.  The next step is to specify a set of questions to be answered by the evaluation. The major questions for this Review can be found in the document entitled Charting the Course (see Publications).

These questions then lead to the definition of the ‘objects’ of the evaluation that specify precisely which aspects of the organization’s performance and capacity are being evaluated.  Any evaluation is meant to determine how well the organization is performing in relation to the objects chosen. This requires the development of performance standards. These standards specify the levels or degrees of desired performance, often using various evaluation criteria that enable us to observe and measure performance. The evaluation criteria used to define standards enable us to answer the following questions: How do we know whether the standard has been met? How do we differentiate an ‘excellent’ level of performance from an ‘adequate’ level, or ‘satisfactory’ from ‘unsatisfactory’ performance? The objects and standards selected for the Educational Review can be found in the evaluation Work Plan (see Publications).

 

Want more information? Provide input? Contact us at: Edreview@cscree.qc.ca.