Editor’s note: Blogger Paul Teske is Dean of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver, and an education policy analyst.

It is often frustrating not knowing enough about programs or policies that might be working in other parts of the country —  in the potential “laboratory of democracy” of local districts and K12 education.  A lot of things are asserted about supposed “successes,” but in some cases the actual evidence is stronger than in others.   The “What Works Clearinghouse” of the U.S. Department of Education is a good step in the right direction, but it has taken a really narrow approach in terms of the programs it studies and what evidence it finds credible.

In a softer version of “what works,” the left- of-center Century Foundation released an interesting short report on three programs – Oklahoma’s preK investments, St. Louis’ open enrollment with suburban districts, and the “Abbott districts” in New Jersey.  All show promise and some successes.

I find the data on the Abbott districts particularly interesting.  The NJ Supreme Court in the 1990s made several bold decisions that involved both state takeovers of failing (and in many cases, corrupt) urban districts, required that more money be spent in these districts compared to wealthier suburban districts (that is, going beyond equity of funding to at-risk weighted funding at the district level) and mandated various whole school reform approaches.

The combination of early literacy, monitoring and interventions, teacher collaboration, and extra tutoring and services, all possible with the extra financial resources, is showing a big reduction in New Jersey’s achievement gap.

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In the recent edition of Educational Leadership, a monthly publication from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum, there is an article titled “The Spectrum of Educational Research,” . It cautions us to remember the limits and benefits of educational research when it comes to making policy decisions.

The article focuses on the research around charter schools and how that research has been politicized by various factions.  It struck a nerve with me because of the way in which we (those of us bloggers) throw around research results as if it was the final word on the topic.

How can we use research to move us from entrenched  ideological positions to an understanding of the complexities of issues and to decisions based on the application of sound judgment?   The article asks us to remember that, “[r]esearch can inform decisions but cannot, in itself, displace the need for judgment.”

Give it a look.

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The U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse has launched a new section called Quick Reviews.  According to DOE’s website:

What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) quick reviews are designed to provide education practitioners and policymakers with timely and objective assessments of the quality of the research evidence from recently released research papers and reports. These reviews focus on studies of the effectiveness of education or school-based interventions serving students in the pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade age range, as well as those in a post-secondary setting.

The What Works Clearinghouse is a product of the Department of Ed’s effort to summarize the current expert thinking on topics of current interest in educational research.  Unfortunately, as with so many Bush-administration attempts to marry science and politics, the Clearinghouse has been a frequent target of criticism from the research community.

It seems that the Clearinghouse has narrowed the definition of what constitutes quality research to such an extreme degree that much good research is excluded.  (See this recent EdWeek article for more on the controversy).  In general, What Works places a premium on quantitative, true-experimental designs.  While these designs do often produce compelling findings, they are frequently either impossible or inappropriate to achieve in ed research.  Many researchers whose work was rejected by What Works also claim a political motive; I’ll let research experts be the judge of that.

Most of us can agree that more high-quality educational research is needed, and that more needs to be done to separate the research wheat from the chaff.  Too bad the What Works Clearinghouse isn’t yet up to the task.

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Let me add one more salvo to the ongoing discussion about education research and bias.  The thoughtful responses to my original post, whether they swing left or swing right, suggest (to borrow from the X-Files) that the truth is out there. 

The argument — that with enough exhaustive, high-quality research, we can ultimately determine the validity of policy research — is accurate, but academic.  The problem is that research has a life beyond the peer-reviewed back-and-forth of academic journals and websites.   Most consumers of research findings — policymakers, parents, reporters, me — don’t have the time to conduct their own peer-reviewed studies of recent research.  Even within the field, few educators truly have the ability or inclination to thoroughly examine the claims of each study out there, and so must rely largely on the conclusions of others.

The result is that most of us trust the findings of those whom we trust.   If we’re teachers, we probably trust the findings of the AFT.  If we’re free-marketeers, our first stop is probably Jay Greene or the Cato Institute.  It’s one of those peculiarities of the field — unlike, say, that of medicine, in which research findings are less likely to be attached to ideology.  Education is simply too complex and interesting to yield so easily to the scientific method.

The bad news?  We actually know far less about the effectiveness of various ed reform approaches than we think we know.  The good news?  Lots of jobs for education wonks.

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