GOAL ATTAINMENT AND STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT IN SELECTED SUBURBAN CATHOLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
Abstract
This study was based upon Stufflebeam's CIPP model of evaluation, and Conrad's and Lawrence and Services' linkage of goals and quantitative output. It determined and compared the perceptions of principals, faculty, parents, and students in Catholic elementary schools with respect to the extent of achievement of the religious, organizational, and instructional objectives that must be achieved if the schools were to attain their mission as Catholic schools and student growth in achievement as measured by the SRA Assessment Survey. This study also sought to ascertain the relationships between these perceptions and selected variables of the respondents. Specifically, this study sought to obtain empirical data regarding the following questions: (1) what were the distributions of the responses of the participants in schools having high, average, and low cognitive growth rate with respect to their perceptions of the extent of achievement of the school's objectives?; (2) did significant differences exist among the means of the responses of participants in the categorized school's concerning their perceptions of the extent of achievement of the school's objectives?; (3) did significant relationships exist between the responses of the participants in the categorized schools with respect to their perceptions of the extent of achievement of the school's objectives and the variables? The subjects of this study consisted of 53 principals, 137 seventh and eighth grade teachers, 457 parents of seventh and eighth grade stduents, and 464 seventh and eighth grade students. The primary instrument used was the Catholic School Questionnaire which was developed by the investigator. The major findings of this study were: (1) generally speaking, the professionals (i.e., principals and faculty) and the clientele (i.e., parents and students) perceived that their schools were achieving those objectives which should be attained if the Catholic school were to fulfill its mission; (2) the majority of the respondents perceived that their schools were achieving the religious objectives more completely than the organizational and instructional objectives; (3) there seemed to be a direct relationship between the organizational and instructional dimensions of a Catholic school and the cognitive growth rate of the students and an inverse relationship between the religious dimension of a Catholic school and the cognitive growth rate of the students; and (4) the varibles that most affected the respondents' perceptions of the extent of achievement of the objectives of the Catholic school were: for the principals, administrative experience; for the faculty, years of teaching experience in Catholic schools; for the parents, hours of familying activities per week; and for the students, hours of homework per week. The major conclusions of this study were: (1) the Catholic schools studied were attaining their purposes as Catholic schools; this achievement, however, was in its formative stage; (2) the respondents perceived the focal point of the strength of their schools to be religious in nature; (3) there was a divergence between the views of the professional educators and the clientele on the achievement of the goals of the Catholic school; (4) the instructional program and the organizational structure of the school were more influential than the religious values imparted in determining student growth in achievement; and (5) the more administrative experience a principal had, the more teaching experience in Catholic schools a teacher had, the more hours per week of familying activities that a family participated in, and the more hours of homework per week that a student did, the more likely it was that the Catholic elementary school was achieving its mission as a Catholic school.
Subject Area
School administration
Recommended Citation
LIGUORI, JAMES A, "GOAL ATTAINMENT AND STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT IN SELECTED SUBURBAN CATHOLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS" (1980). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI8020993.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI8020993
