Assessing the assessment: A study of the Texas principal assessment

The principal of a campus is key to the success of the students on that campus. In Texas, a state-mandated principal assessment process was implemented in 1999 to provide for the professional growth of all campus administrators. The assessment is a one and one-half day process that costs each administrator one thousand dollars.; Utilizing a causal-comparative design, the study addressed five research questions about how the effectiveness of principals who have completed the principal assessment process compared to the effectiveness of principals who have not completed the process when effectiveness is measured by campus gains in the average Texas Learning Index for the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) in Reading and Mathematics. In addition, the participants were asked to complete a self-report instrument, the Instructional Leadership Inventory.; Participants for the study were drawn from the population of principals in the state of Texas, using seventy-one who have completed the Developmental Assessment Center. To allow for matching, a principal who had not undergone any assessment process prior to April of 2002 was randomly chosen from the schools listed in the Comparison Group published by the Texas Education Agency for each of the seventy-one principals who have undergone the process. The dependent variable, effectiveness, was measured by average campus gains in the Texas Learning Index for the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills in Reading and Mathematics from the 2000 to the 2001, and the 2001 to the 2002 administrations of the test. In addition, the mean score for each group of participants obtained from the Instructional Leadership Inventory was compared. The statistical analysis used for the comparison of the Texas Learning Index gains was the t-test for matched pairs. Because of a low response rate, the comparison of scores on the Instructional Leadership Inventory was conducted using t-tests for unmatched pairs.; The analysis revealed that there was not any statistically significant difference at the .05 level except when the analysis was conducted for mathematics the year immediately following completion of the assessment. The results could be predicted by a preponderance of the literature that suggests that assessment center practices are not useful for predicting on-the-job performance.