With changing circumstances around the world, the effectiveness of schools has come to be more deeply questioned. The effectiveness of schools is important in terms of the extent to which students achieve desired success (Hoy & Miskel, 2012) and the extent to which resources are used appropriately and efficiently. One of the school development approaches is effective school movement. According to Ada and Akan (2007), the aim of the effective school movement is to take actions for the individual to self-realize. Therefore, the effective school movement can be expressed as an important way for schools to achieve their goals.

Organizational effectiveness at the school level is the degree of achievement of the organization's goals (Başaran & Çınkır, 2011). However, effectiveness should not be limited to just the degree to which a school realizes its goals. Indeed, effectiveness is a broad concept that includes efficiency. School effectiveness has five levels in line with its functions. According to this, the effective school has individual, institutional, social, national, and international levels (Balcı, 2011).

There is no common model for measuring effective schools. It is appropriate to evaluate students' success by using public exams; however, this is not enough. Evaluating schools according to student achievement/performance on public exams is partly measuring what the school produces (Balcı, 2011). At this point, it is important to evaluate whether public exams help schools show effectiveness by considering effective school features.

The effectiveness of schools is measured in the proposed study through the determination of their level of possession of the characteristics of an effective school. It is clear that for schools, the primary objective of which is the learning of pupils, the issue of possessing the characteristics of an effective school is significant, in terms of the degree to which they realize their teaching objectives and the correct and efficient use of their resources. The study will be carried out in secondary education schools in the province of Ankara. The study will use the outliers research pattern.

Aim and the context of the study

The aim of the study is to identify the degree to which the top-performing five public secondary education schools in the province of Ankara and the bottom performing five possess effective school characteristics. These schools are to be identified using statistics published by the Ministry of National Education on the results of the Undergraduate Placement Examination (LYS). In Turkey, pupils take an exam with two sessions to enter university. The first session is known as the Entry to Higher Education Examination (YGS), while the second is called the Undergraduate Placement Examination (LYS). In the first session, all candidates take a generalized examination which is based on the common secondary education school curriculum. Only those candidates who score more than a set mark in the first examination are admitted to the second. The second stage determines the undergraduate course placement of the candidates. Therefore LYS exam outcomes in Turkey determine not just pupils’, but also schools’ success in Turkey. One of the most important indicators of effectiveness is undoubtedly school leaders. Effective leaders set high expectations and standards in terms of academic and social development for students and teachers (NAESP, 2001, 6-7 as cited in Miller, Devin & Shoop, 2007, 19). In this study is also aimed to get school administrators’ views about the effectiveness of their schools.

There are three phases in this study. The first phase of the study is designed as a quantitative study to determine teachers’ views about the effectiveness of the schools. The schools to be used in the study have been identified according to LYS results. The teacher version of the School Effectiveness Scale developed by Günal (2014) is used. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis has been carried out, results of which show that the scale is valid and reliable. The scale was tested for validity and reliability in a study of teachers’ and administrators’ opinions in the province of another city. As it is to be implemented in the province of Ankara, the suitability of its structure was tested with a confirmatory factor analysis before the main implementation took place. Confirmatory factor analysis was performed to see whether the factors formed as a result of factor analysis worked in the desired structure. It was concluded that a significant part of the goodness-of-fit indices of the scales showed excellent fit and was within acceptable values. In the second phase of the study, teachers from 10 schools were surveyed. The goal was to reach out to at least 20 teachers from each school. The stage of collecting the data is finalized. Now, the analysis is taking place. The third phase of the study is designed as a phenomenological qualitative inquiry to get the views of school administrators. According to Patton (2014), phenomenology studies focus on how people interpret experience. It is attempted to define the reactions and perspectives of persons who share a common experience on any phenomenon through in-depth interviews about this pattern (Fraenkel & Wallen, 2009). The study group is 10 school administrators who work in high and low-performing schools. The semi-structured interview form which is developed by the researchers was used to collect the data. The interview form includes both demographic variables and open-ended questions (e.g. how do you evaluate the location and the possibilities of your school?). The draft form has been submitted to obtain the opinions of experts to ensure the content validity of the study. According to the recommendations of the experts, the necessary changes were made. The interviews were recorded upon taking the permission of the school administrators. Recordings were uploaded to the computer and transcribed. NVivo will be used to analyze the data through the content analysis method.

School effectiveness has been a field of interest for years. An important factor was found to be the teachers’ assessments of their schools in terms of characteristics of effective schools. That the opinions of school administrators are also significant is clear. It is expected that schools with high levels of LYS success will display more characteristics of effective schools. Should this prove to be the case, there can be made evidence-based calls for measures to improve the effective school characteristics of low performing schools. This study is significant in determining whether top-performing and low-performing schools show the characteristics of being effective school according to university entrance exam results. In other words, academic success is important in determining whether high-performing schools show effective school characteristics and also how they are defining effectiveness. The results will be presented by comparing the school effectiveness results of many other countries (e.g. USA, UK, Netherlands) and reports (e. g. Coleman, Plowden).

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