Studies Find No Effects
Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (Jan. 7) about whether randomized field trials in education should be abandoned, since they so rarely find that the treatments have any effects.
Peterson and Finn’s previous podcasts:
Focus of School Reform Shifting to Teachers (12/17/09)
Are Middle Schools or Middle Schoolers the Problem? (12/10/09)
Biggest Spender in Politics: The NEA (12/4/09)
Saving Jobs or Stimulating Reform? (11/24/09)
Election Postmortem (11/19/09)
Will Congress Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut? (11/4/09)
Voters Choose Neighborhood Schools over Socioeconomic Diversity (10/29/09)
The Nobel Committee Isn’t the Only One Giving Speculative Prizes (10/22/09)
Will Michelle Rhee Triumph? (10/14/09)
Will the Federal Role in Education Double? (10/8/09)
Charter Schools Narrow Achievement Gaps in New York City (10/1/09)
What Congress Is Not Working On (9/24/09)
Charter Schools, Unions, and Linking Teachers with Student Achievement Data (9/17/09)
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Decades ago first issue of Transpersonal Psychology had a great article on living in the question. This discussion is very refreshing as researchers question the processes of how they try to find answers to education questions. For the past 55 years my research questions have been pursued in a field other than education or medicine. Aero-space answers are sought in the deterministic realm not the stochastic, mainly due to the “hardness” of our science. Research is conducted within framework of the entire system. It is also strongly linked to development with much back and forth iteration.
I might suggest abandoning “accounting” type of backward looking research prevalent in education that produces best practices of yesteryear. I may be worth a try to refocus on forward looking emerging practices and emerging trends. One such pioneering effort wasWilson District K-8 district in 1992 which transformed their academically worse school in Arizona (125th of 125) and most social-economically challenged. Their naive board of grandmothers knew nothing of transformation or systems design But they put a 486 Dx50 computer into every student’s desk, had one full time mentor-trainer for each if two schools, put in full Integrated Learning System of the best K-8 digital curriculum available, and had wire closet the size of an office. By late 1990′s they had soared to become one of the top academic schools feeding Phx Union High School district, and remain at this level today.
Take a systems approach, focus on the teacher and student supported by order of magnitude increase in teacher professional development and full digital curriculum, and oh-by-the-way get screens for all kids and formative assessment data systems.
Now you have something that our barren history of tweaking legacy education components does not have, a one sigma effect factor on academy performance.
Give the aerospace method of systems design, develop, test and redesign a try. You may have a different conversation next time.
Cheers
Ted Kraver eSATS
SB, SM, MBA, PhD MIT, UCLA, ASU