– EWD, or educational value added, is a nationwide project designed to present reliable results showing students’ knowledge gains, says Edyta Gawlik-Lippik, a mathematics teacher at Janusz Korczak II General Secondary School in Bolesławiec. – It is a very reliable indicator. Until now, this type of comparison took into account only final examination results.
However, as we can read on the www.ewd.edu.pl website, “students’ examination results depend on many factors independent of the school, above all on students’ prior achievements. [...] Final examination results can, in many cases, be highly unreliable indicators of whether a given school teaches well. Measures of the progress made by students while studying at a given school are a much better indicator of teaching effectiveness. This progress makes it possible to determine educational value added in a statistically valid manner.”
What is more, a positive EWD value “indicates above-average teaching effectiveness on a nationwide scale.” The effectiveness of II LO is particularly clear in the case of mathematics and science subjects (mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, biology and geography), as well as mathematics itself.
A school’s EWD is represented on a chart by means of an ellipse. The more examination results are included in the calculations, the smaller the ellipse (and consequently, the smaller the ellipse, the more reliable the data presented on the chart).
The EWD indicator for Bolesławiec’s II LO—both for mathematics and science subjects and for mathematics itself—is located in the upper-right quadrant, which means that the institution is “a school with high final examination results and high effectiveness.”
On Tuesday, March 19, the institution hosted Urszula Tkaczyk-Ciotkowska, a consultant at the Legnica branch of the Lower Silesian Teacher Development Centre. “You have excellent results in mathematics and in mathematics and science subjects,” she said during a meeting with II LO’s teachers and management. “In this group of subjects, you are a school of success.”
“This does not mean, however, that the school achieves excellent results only in mathematics and science subjects,” says Mirosław Sakowski, headmaster of II General Secondary School. “Teaching effectiveness is also evident in the humanities (Polish language, history and civics) and in Polish.”
(information: www.ewd.edu.pl/II LO/ii)