Abstract:

Leadership has a critical influence on how educational resources are distributed, and whether all students have an equal access to high quality educational opportunity. At municipal level, it can manifest in differences between school performance, school segregation being its most extreme expression. At school level, an unequal access to high quality educational opportunity may manifest in the way how student cohorts of the same grade are organized.

The research is based on the analysis of national assessment data (Year 2019, Year 2020) in Mathematics and Latvian Language for the grade 3, grade 6 and grade 9 students in the three municipalities that are chosen for this study. Student performance data is compared to the national average. Additionally, qualitative research data from interviews with school leadership from all three municipalities is used to interpret the contexts for disparities.

The research aims to have a more nuanced look at student performance disparities and the influence of educational leadership on those disparities both at the municipal, as well as school level. The performance between all schools of one of the three municipalities are compared to see whether there are significant school-level differences within each of the municipalities, and the extent of the school-level differences between all three municipalities are further analysed (Research Question 1). Further, the performance between all student cohorts of the same grade in each of the schools of a particular municipality are compared to see whether there are significant grade-level differences among each of the schools of the same municipality, and the extent of the grade-level disparities between all schools of the same municipality and all three municipalities are further analysed (Research Question 2). At last, the school-level and grade-level differences among all three municipalities are compared and analysed in the context of strategies and practice of educational leadership, thus exploring the influence of school and municipal leadership on the disparities in student performance (Research Question 3).

The analysis of the case studies of the three municipalities are located on a coordinate plane with one axis indicating low and high disparities of student performance at the grade level, and the other axis – low and high disparities of student performance at the school level. As a result, four disparity quadrants are created, allowing authors to conclude that in ensuring academic equality for students there are two thresholds to take into account:
1) the level of equality of educational opportunity among all schools in a particular area,
2) the level of equality of educational opportunity among all student cohorts of the same grade in a particular school. Authors outline that the leadership approach and decisions taken at the municipal level primarily influence the disparities among schools, and the leadership approach and decisions taken at the school level primarily influence the disparities among student cohorts of the same year, i.e. grade 3, grade 6 or grade 9.

Conclusions of the research are a significant contribution to the student performance improvement model authors are working on. The model is based on a thorough analysis of leadership, teacher and student data to see what factors and what practices are at the centre of the improvement of student performance in a particular school and municipality.

Keywords:

School leadership’s influence on student performance, school leadership practices, student performance disparities, academic inequality, equal educational opportunity.