Open Schools and Achievement: Extended Tests of a Finding of No Relationship.

Several extended tests of the relationship between the "openness" of a school's instructional program and student achievement fail to show sizeable or consistent positive or negative effects in a survey of 6,225 students from 39 elementary and secondary schools. Conventional analyses of the immediate impact of openness on student achievement, net offamily background, show that openness accounts for less than two percent of the variance in test scores and that the direction of the relationship is inconsistent across four grades. Extended tests which confirm a finding of no relationship include analyses of (1) duration of exposure to openness, (2) withinschool differences of openness across subject areas, and (3) consistency of student subgroup differences. Implications for cumulative research to evaluate school innovations are discussed.