effectiveness and efficiency of educational measures evaluation practices, indicators and rhetoric教育措施的有效性和效率评估实践,指标和修辞.pdfVIP

Sociology Mind 2012. Vol.2, No.3, 255-260 Published Online July 2012 in SciRes (http ://www.SciRP.org/journal/sm) /10.4236/sm.2012.23034 Effectiveness and Efficiency of Educational Measures: Evaluation Practices, Indicators and Rhetoric Federica Cornali University of Turin, Turin, Italy Email: federica.cornali@unito.it Received March 2nd th th , 2012; revised April 12 , 2012; accepted May 15 , 2012 In recent years, evaluating the performance of educational organizations has sparked increasing interest and debate. Many expectations ride on the smooth operation of school systems. It is widely believed that countries’ social and economic well-being will depend to an ever greater extent on the quality of their citi- zens’ education: the emergence of the so-called “knowledge society”, the transformation of information and the media, and increasing specialization on the part of organizations all call for high skill profiles and levels of knowledge. Today’s education systems are required to be both effective and efficient, or in other words, to reach the goals set for them while making the best use of available resources. This paper, by presenting and discussing a case study, will analyze several dimensions of schools’ effectiveness and effi- ciency, highlighting the importance of selecting evaluation p