Study methods

This chapter presents the process of data collection and describe the study’s instruments and measures. It provides information about the study’s multilevel models and describes the statistical procedures used while developing the analytical strategy. The 13-item External Accountability scale intended to measure the tendency to report to external audiences such as the principal, parents, or school management generally (in the case of teachers) and school boards (in the case of principals). Thus, regression coefficients are provided that give information about individual teachers compared to their school mean. The teachers’ data, therefore, were analyzed using two levels: a teacher level, composed of individual teachers’ scores, and a teacher faculty level, where school teacher scores were aggregated as school means, further referred to as school level. A short version (seven items) of external accountability was used to assess external accountability to each of two audiences: parents and school management.