Educational Practices and Policies That Promote Achievement. Publication Series No. 7.

This paper identifies research findings from a study on researcher and practitioner views of the relative effects of policies and practices on learning and the degree to which the implementation of what they view as important policy and practice influences on learning can be assessed and can serve as a basis for educational reform. It was designed to compile a database on research findings, expert knowledge, and educators' judgments and aimed to identify implementation standards for the delivery of standards-based reforms. A framework of 228 influences on student learning was organized into 6 theoretical constructs and used to revise a survey previously developed to determine educational researcher and administrator attitudes. Of the total of 3,141 surveys mailed, 1,818 were returned. Results show substantial agreement between researchers' and administrators' views on the relative influences of educational policies and practices. Such consensus assures that a knowledge base of successful programs can be used to help improve academic achievement. Results suggest that instruction, curriculum, and school-wide practices have considerably stronger learning influences than federal, state, and district policies. Many highly influential practices and few highly influential policies can serve as promising candidates for educational reform since both researcher and administrator groups concur about their efficacy. Especially promising are the policies agreed on as high influence and highly assessable. Item influence and assessability ratings might be useful in identifying delivery standards, local program development, the development of accountability measures, monitoring program implementation, and identifying and designing outcomes for use in summative evaluation. (Contains 2 figures, 9 tables, and 28 references.) (SLD)