[House Hearing, 112 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EDUCATION RESEARCH: IDENTIFYING
EFFECTIVE PROGRAMS TO SUPPORT
STUDENTS AND TEACHERS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD,
ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
AND THE WORKFORCE
U.S. House of Representatives
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, NOVEMBER 16, 2011
__________
Serial No. 112-47
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and the Workforce
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_____
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COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE
JOHN KLINE, Minnesota, Chairman
Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin George Miller, California,
Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon, Senior Democratic Member
California Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
Judy Biggert, Illinois Donald M. Payne, New Jersey
Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey
Joe Wilson, South Carolina Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott,
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Virginia
Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Lynn C. Woolsey, California
Duncan Hunter, California Ruben Hinojosa, Texas
David P. Roe, Tennessee Carolyn McCarthy, New York
Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania John F. Tierney, Massachusetts
Tim Walberg, Michigan Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio
Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee David Wu, Oregon
Richard L. Hanna, New York Rush D. Holt, New Jersey
Todd Rokita, Indiana Susan A. Davis, California
Larry Bucshon, Indiana Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Timothy H. Bishop, New York
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania David Loebsack, Iowa
Kristi L. Noem, South Dakota Mazie K. Hirono, Hawaii
Martha Roby, Alabama
Joseph J. Heck, Nevada
Dennis A. Ross, Florida
Mike Kelly, Pennsylvania
Barrett Karr, Staff Director
Jody Calemine, Minority Staff Director
SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD,
ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION
DUNCAN HUNTER, California, Chairman
John Kline, Minnesota Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin Ranking Minority Member
Judy Biggert, Illinois Donald M. Payne, New Jersey
Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott,
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Virginia
Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Carolyn McCarthy, New York
Richard L. Hanna, New York Rush D. Holt, New Jersey
Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Susan A. Davis, California
Kristi L. Noem, South Dakota Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
Martha Roby, Alabama Mazie K. Hirono, Hawaii
Mike Kelly, Pennsylvania Lynn C. Woolsey, California
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on November 16, 2011................................ 1
Statement of Members:
Holt, Hon. Rush D., a Representative in Congress from the
State of New Jersey........................................ 3
Hunter, Hon. Duncan, Chairman, Subcommittee on Early
Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education.............. 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 3
Statement of Witnesses:
Fleischman, Steve, deputy executive officer, Education
Northwest; director, Regional Educational Laboratory
Northwest.................................................. 18
Prepared statement of.................................... 19
Hoxby, Dr. Caroline, Scott and Donya Bommer professor of
economics, Stanford University............................. 11
Prepared statement of.................................... 13
Smith, Dr. Eric J., former Florida Commissioner of Education,
Florida Department of Education............................ 23
Prepared statement of.................................... 25
Whitehurst, Dr. Grover J. ``Russ,'' senior fellow and
director of the Brown Center on Education Policy, Brookings
Institution................................................ 5
Prepared statement of.................................... 7
Additional submissions:
Foxx, Hon. Virginia, a Representative in Congress from the
State of North Carolina, questions submitted for the record 45
Mr. Holt:
The Learning and Education Academic Research Network,
prepared statement of.................................. 43
Report, ``From Compliance to Service: Evolving the State
Role to Support District Data Efforts to Improve
Student Achievement,'' Internet address to............. 44
Dr. Hoxby, response to questions submitted for the record.... 45
Chairman Hunter, questions submitted for the record:
To Dr. Hoxby............................................. 44
To Dr. Smith............................................. 47
To Dr. Whitehurst........................................ 48
McCarthy, Hon. Carolyn, a Representative in Congress from the
State of New York, policy brief, ``Increasing Participation
in No Child Left Behind School Choice,'' Internet address
to......................................................... 36
Dr. Smith, response to questions submitted for the record.... 48
Dr. Whitehurst, response to questions submitted for the
record..................................................... 49
EDUCATION RESEARCH: IDENTIFYING
EFFECTIVE PROGRAMS TO SUPPORT
STUDENTS AND TEACHERS
----------
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Early Childhood,
Elementary and Secondary Education
Committee on Education and the Workforce
Washington, DC
----------
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m., in
room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Duncan Hunter
[chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Hunter, Petri, Platts, Foxx,
Hanna, Barletta, Roby, Kelly, Payne, Scott, McCarthy, Holt,
Davis, and Woolsey.
Staff present: Jennifer Allen, Press Secretary; Katherine
Bathgate, Press Assistant/New Media Coordinator; Heather Couri,
Deputy Director of Education and Human Services Policy; Lindsay
Fryer, Professional Staff Member; Krisann Pearce, General
Counsel; Mandy Schaumburg, Education and Human Services
Oversight Counsel; Dan Shorts, Legislative Assistant; Linda
Stevens, Chief Clerk/Assistant to the General Counsel; Alissa
Strawcutter, Deputy Clerk; Brad Thomas, Senior Education Policy
Advisor; Kate Ahlgren, Investigative Counsel; Daniel Brown,
Junior Legislative Assistant; John D'Elia, Staff Assistant;
Jamie Fasteau, Deputy Director of Education Policy; Ruth
Friedman, Director of Education Policy; Brian Levin, New Media
Press Assistant; Kara Marchione, Senior Education Policy
Advisor; Melissa Salmanowitz, Communications Director for
Education; Laura Schifter, Senior Education and Disability
Advisor; and Michael Zola, Senior Counsel.
Chairman Hunter. Good morning. A quorum being present, the
subcommittee will come to order.
Welcome to today's subcommittee hearing. I would like to
thank our witnesses for joining us today. We look forward to
hearing your testimony.
Providing more information about educational quality to
families and communities is essential to improving K-12 schools
in America. We are here today to discuss the value of education
research, explore the appropriate level of federal involvement,
and examine ways to improve current law to provide more
immediate and relevant data to parents and educators.
Since the enactment of the Education Sciences Reform Act
the federal government has played an important role in
supporting research and program evaluations and gathering data
about educational practice and the nation's schools. Today,
federal expert panels and research centers offer support to
state and local organizations that perform education research.
The responsibility for education research is shared by both
federal and nonfederal organizations in an effort to examine
the quality of existing programs, develop and test innovative
practices, and ensure the effective use of taxpayer dollars.
The resultant data allows teachers, parents, and officials
to gain a greater understanding of successful interventions,
school performance, and student achievement. For example, the
Institute of Education Sciences established the What Works
Clearinghouse to provide educators, policymakers, and the
public with a central and trusted source of scientific evidence
of what works in education.
Information from the clearinghouse showed the ``I CAN
Learn'' curriculum resulted in significant achievement gains
for 8th grade and math students. However, the What Works
Clearinghouse needs improvement, especially in providing clear
direction on applying research to classroom practices.
Education research has also helped us identify programs
that are not helping students succeed. Particularly in these
times of trillion dollar deficits and record debt,
congressional leaders must be careful stewards of taxpayer
dollars.
We can all agree on the need to dedicate federal education
funds to the most effective programs; if research and data show
a program is not working we should get rid of it. That is why
my colleagues and I introduced legislation to eliminate more
than 40 ineffective or duplicative programs as part of our K-12
education reform package.
Through the Education Sciences Reform Act and related
initiatives we have made great strides in assessing the quality
of K-12 schools, protecting taxpayers' investment, and
identifying successful education practices. However, as we look
toward reauthorization of this law we must acknowledge the
challenges facing education research and the Institute of
Education Sciences.
For instance, we must find better ways to help states and
school districts translate the best research principles into
classroom practices. Existing research centers designed to
provide technical assistance to states and districts need to do
a better job sharing information to help local education
officials identify and implement the practices and programs
that are most likely to work for their students.
Another challenge exists in establishing a more
collaborative relationship between the director of the
Institution of Education Sciences and the secretary of
education. Maintaining the autonomy and independence of the IES
is extremely important; the director's role must stay
nonpolitical. However, more communication and data sharing
between the two entities could ultimately lead to better, more
effective federal education programs and initiatives.
The witnesses here today have valuable insight into the
ways we can ensure education research is beneficial to parents,
teachers, and students. I look forward to a productive and
informative discussion this morning.
I will now recognize my distinguished colleague, Rush Holt,
for his opening remarks.
[The statement of Mr. Hunter follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Duncan Hunter, Chairman, Subcommittee on
Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education
Providing more information about educational quality to families
and communities is essential to improving K-12 schools in America. We
are here today to discuss the value of education research, explore the
appropriate level of federal involvement, and examine ways to improve
current law to provide more immediate and relevant data to parents and
educators.
Since the enactment of the Education Sciences Reform Act, the
federal government has played an important role in supporting research
and program evaluations, and gathering data about educational practice
and the nation's schools. Today, federal expert panels and research
centers offer support to state and local organizations that perform
education research. The responsibility for education research is shared
by both federal and non-federal organizations in an effort to examine
the quality of existing programs, develop and test innovative
practices, and ensure the effective use of taxpayer dollars.
The resultant data allows teachers, parents, and officials to gain
a greater understanding of successful interventions, school
performance, and student achievement. For example, the Institute of
Education Sciences established the What Works Clearinghouse to provide
educators, policymakers, and the public with a central and trusted
source of scientific evidence of what works in education. Information
from the Clearinghouse showed the ``I CAN Learn'' curriculum resulted
in significant achievement gains for 8th grade math students. However,
the What Works Clearinghouse needs improvement, especially in providing
clear direction on applying research to classroom practices.
Education research has also helped us identify programs that are
not helping students succeed. Particularly in these times of trillion-
dollar deficits and record debt, Congressional leaders must be careful
stewards of taxpayer dollars. We can all agree on the need to dedicate
federal education funds to the most effective programs; if research and
data show a program is not working, we should get rid of it. That's why
my colleagues and I introduced legislation to eliminate more than 40
ineffective or duplicative programs as part of our K-12 education
reform package.
Through the Education Sciences Reform Act and related initiatives,
we have made great strides in assessing the quality of K-12 schools,
protecting taxpayers' investments, and identifying successful
educational practices. However, as we look toward reauthorization of
this law, we must acknowledge the challenges facing education research
and the Institute of Education Sciences.
For instance, we must find better ways to help states and school
districts translate the best research principles into classroom
practices. Existing research centers designed to provide technical
assistance to states and districts need to do a better job sharing
information to help local education officials identify and implement
the practices and programs that are most likely to work for their
students.
Another challenge exists in establishing a more collaborative
relationship between the Director of the Institute of Education
Sciences and the Secretary of Education. Maintaining the autonomy and
independence of the IES is extremely important; the Director's role
must stay non-political. However, more communication and data sharing
between the two entities could ultimately lead to better, more
effective federal education programs and initiatives.
The witnesses here today have valuable insight into the ways we can
ensure education research is beneficial to parents, teachers, and
students. I look forward to a productive and informative discussion
this morning.
______
Mr. Holt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the
hearing.
And I am pleased to welcome the witnesses here today. I
think we will learn a lot. I thank you for taking time to
provide us with guidance on how to use data and research to
improve educational practices at large and individual student
performance.
A few years back I visited an elementary and middle school
in Union City, New Jersey to learn more about innovations in a
school district that had been troubled, and how they used data
to improve student achievement. Union City is what we call in
New Jersey an Abbott school district. It is a dense urban
district with an overwhelming majority of English language
learning students, and yet, to the surprise of many education
experts, the district is meeting or exceeding state standards
now.
They did a number of things to accomplish this, but one
thing in particular they did was to provide frequent evaluation
of all students and shared the test data immediately with
teachers. Union City teachers were able, then, to tailor their
instruction to meet each student's individual needs. Data
showed that teachers and administrators could identify trends
that could be addressed systemically and individually, and this
approach of continually using data to inform instruction helped
the students do far better than previous classes of students
had done.
Now, each of us thinks we are an expert on education
because we were students. We have to guard against that, and we
have to remember that there are things that we can learn about
how people learn. And we need data, we need evidence, we need
research to help us understand how people learn and how we can
improve instruction.
The Educational Sciences Reform Act was intended to provide
for the improvement of federal education research, statistics,
evaluation, and dissemination of data to inform education
policy and education practice. It supports data-driven
development and supports practitioners in understanding
research and data from their schools.
I really believe that it helps educators make decisions
about their students' learning experiences, and it helps states
use research to identify successful instructional programs. It
helps teachers and principals implement proven school
improvement strategies, and it would help us if we would use
those data and if we would use that research. The federal
government plays an important role in supporting the research.
Educators across the country need reliable research to enable
them to make evidence-based decisions in the classroom, and
they need data-driven systems that support instruction.
In reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act, I hope we will maintain accountability for acceptable,
adequate progress for all students. We can be more flexible
with how students improve, how schools improve, and how we
empower schools to use their data, if we make more use of
evidence and drive evidence-based decisions. As the committee
continues to work on the reauthorization of ESEA and ESRA I
hope we will continue to pay attention to the role of research
and data in improving student outcomes.
I am going to reintroduce soon the Metrics Act to help
improve data sharing and instruction at the local level. I
think improved use of data can help all students do better, and
I hope we will be able to include my legislation in any
reauthorization of ESEA.
Strongly held beliefs or ideological commitment should not
trump data or evidence. If we want to make the best policy we
need evidence-based research. At the individual level, if we
really want to hold schools accountable for adequate progress
for each student they have to use data, and we have to see that
it is used in the most illustrative way.
So continued federal investment in educational research
will be necessary if we are to ensure that all students receive
a quality education that prepares them for life and further
study. I hope the testimony today will provide us with some
recommendations on how we can strengthen the ESRA and the
federal investment in education research.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Hunter. Thank the gentleman.
Pursuant to Committee Rule 7c, all subcommittee members
will be permitted to submit written statements to be included
in the permanent hearing record, and without objection, the
hearing record will remain open for 14 days to allow
statements, questions for the record, and other extraneous
material referenced during the hearing to be submitted in the
official hearing record.
It is now my distinguished pleasure to introduce our panel
of witnesses. Dr. Grover J. ``Russ'' Whitehurst is the director
of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings
Institution. Previously, he was the first director of the
Institute of Education Sciences.
Dr. Caroline Hoxby is the Scott and Donya Bommer Professor
in Economics at Stanford University, the director of the
Economics of Education program at the National Bureau of
Economic Research, and a senior fellow of the Hoover
Institution and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy
Research.
Mr. Steve Fleischman is the deputy executive officer of
Education Northwest, formerly known as Northwest Regional
Educational Laboratory, the organization that has managed the
REL Northwest Laboratory since 1966. He has also served as
director of REL Northwest.
Lastly, Dr. Eric Smith is the former commissioner of
education for the state of Florida. Dr. Smith is currently a
consultant to a number of state education chiefs and school
districts on several education reform projects.
Before I recognize each of you to provide your testimony
let me briefly explain our lighting system. When you start it
will be green, you will have 5 minutes; when you have 1 minute
left it will turn yellow; and when it turns red we would ask
you to wrap up as best as you can. After everyone has
testified, the members will have 5 minutes to ask a question of
the panel.
I would now like to recognize Dr. Whitehurst for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DR. GROVER J. ``RUSS'' WHITEHURST, SENIOR FELLOW
AND DIRECTOR OF THE BROWN CENTER ON EDUCATION POLICY, BROOKINGS
INSTITUTION
Mr. Whitehurst. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
committee. I really appreciate the invitation to testify, and I
am pleased that you have such a keen interest in education
research and reauthorizing ESRA.
Everyone in the room knows that education is important. It
has been true in this country throughout its history. In fact,
before we were a country a first thing that a small, colonial
village would do is set up a school once it had enough kids to
require schooling.
But in an age of globalization and the advent of a
knowledge-based economy, the imperative for us to educate well
is stronger than it has ever been. High quality education
research is critical to the nation's effort to deliver better
education and a future of opportunities to our citizens.
Without good evidence we are destined to embrace education
policies that move us forward, backwards, and sideways, and we
are not even going to know in which of those directions we are
heading.
The Educational Sciences Reform Act, which originated in
this subcommittee in 2001, made great strides towards improving
quality and independence of federally sponsored education
research. Prior to that legislation the federal stewardship of
education research was widely viewed as a failure.
Since then, we have seen considerable progress in the
quality and relevance of that research and evidence for that
comes from a number of sources. Let me just give you a very
short list of some things we know now that we did not know 10
years ago that are a product of the federal investment in
education research.
On teachers, we know that teachers vary dramatically in
their effectiveness. A very effective compared to a very
ineffective teacher can create achievement gains for a child in
1 year that can wipe out a third of the achievement gap between
white and black students, and you can see the effects of a very
effective teacher in elementary school all the way into
adulthood, in terms of college-going and job earnings.
On the organization of schools, we know now that no excuses
charter schools in urban areas do a dramatically better job
than traditional public schools in raising student achievement.
On standards, we have learned that the quality of state
standards for what students should know, contrary to what seem
to be reasonable assumptions, bear no relationship to student
achievement. The states with the best standards can have low
levels of achievement relative to states with weak standards,
and vice-versa.
On the effectiveness of federally funded education
programs, we now know that a significant number of those
programs are not achieving their intended effects.
And finally, on basic learning and instructional processes
we have a whole list of things we have learned, including the
interesting fact that testing students on the content of the
classroom assignments produces substantially more learning than
the same amount of time spent restudying the material.
So I could provide you a much longer list. There are many
things we know now that we did not know 10 years ago. If
knowledge is power we are in a much better shape than we used
to be, and that augurs well for the future.
ESRA is overdue for reauthorization. I will not take you
through a to-do list for reauthorizing the law. Let me simply
say it is a pretty good piece of legislation; I think it needs
some fine-tuning, and that is about it.
Finally, I want to address the federal role in
incorporating the findings from research into program mandates.
No Child Left Behind uses the phrase ``scientifically-based
research'' 111 times--I counted--and it includes mandates for
states and local education agencies to base their practices on
research. The most extreme example is the now defunct program,
Reading First, which dictated how early reading instruction was
to be delivered at the classroom level at a very granular
level.
It is a fundamental mistake, in my view, for Congress to
dictate how states and LEAs should use findings from research.
Research is seldom definitive. Its reflection in statute and
on-the-ground implementation is typically flawed, and our
knowledge advances at too fast a rate for legislation to keep
up.
Instead of telling states and local education agencies what
they should do and appealing to research as a justification, in
my view, Congress should focus on creating incentives for
practitioners and policymakers to incorporate research findings
into their programs. Those incentives should be based around
the performance of schools.
When my grandfather learned about research findings that
would help him generate a higher yield from his farm he didn't
need to be told by government that he had to utilize those
findings; it was in his self-interest to do so and he did.
Likewise, education providers will use research when it helps
them do something for which they are accountable.
There are two ways to fashion an accountability system that
will create a demand for research findings. One is top-down
regulatory accountability, as we have seen in No Child Left
Behind. Washington says, ``Here are your targets for student
achievement. If you don't meet them the following things will
happen.''
The other approach is bottom-up marketplace accountability.
Parents are given choices of where to send their kids to
school. They get good information on school performance.
Funding follows kids. Schools that aren't performing well lose
students and funding. The managers of those schools are
motivated to improve their performance and seek solutions,
including those from good research.
I am in favor of a market-based approach to creating demand
for research and I urge you to consider it in the context of
the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act.
In conclusion, as a result of rigorous and relevant
education research we know much more than we did about what
works and what doesn't in education than we did a few years
ago. We have got a long way to go before we know enough to
assure a good education to every student.
We have started. We are making progress. I appreciate this
committee's understanding of the importance of the work and the
critical role the federal government plays in advancing it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The statement of Dr. Whitehurst follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Grover J. ``Russ'' Whitehurst, Senior Fellow
and Director of the Brown Center on Education Policy, Brookings
Institution
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: I am Russ Whitehurst. I
direct the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings
Institution. Prior to holding my present position, I was the founding
director of the Institute of Education Sciences within the U.S.
Department of Education. Before entering government service I had a
long career as a researcher and academic administrator.
Thank you for the invitation to testify. I am pleased that there is
such interest and leadership in addressing the quality of education
research in America.
Everyone in this room knows that education is important. I expect
that all of us have had an experience with a teacher, a class, an
educational institution, or through independent learning that has
changed our lives. I certainly have. The American dream of opportunity
and advancement and the educational system of the United State are
inextricably connected. This has been true throughout our history.
Indeed, well before the country was founded it was typical for colonial
villages that had grown to more than a few hundred people to establish
and fund a public school, with the first dating to 1639. Since that
time, we have continued to value education and invest in it. But in an
age of globalization and the advent of a knowledge based economy, the
imperative to educate and educate well is stronger than it has ever
been. The evidence that nations with a better educated populace
experience higher growth rates is compelling, and during the current
economic downturn the unemployment rate in the U.S. for young adults
with just a high school diploma has been three times the rate for those
with a college degree.
High quality education research is critical to the nation's effort
to deliver better education and a future of opportunity to our
citizens. Without good evidence on the condition of education, what
works and what does not, fundamental processes of learning and
instruction, and breakthrough instructional technologies we are
destined to embrace education policies that move us forward, backward,
and sideways without even knowing in which of those directions we're
heading. Without good education research, our approaches to education
reform are more akin to fashion and fancy--the width of a man's tie or
the length of a woman's skirt--than to anything that is rational and
benefits from a systematic examination of evidence.
Think of what federal investments in agricultural research have
accomplished. My grandparents were farmers during the transition from
the way things had always been to farming based on the knowledge
produced by agricultural research. I remember well my grandfather
coming back from a meeting with an agricultural extension agent excited
about what new seeds and new approaches to crop rotation could do for
the family farm. And because he was an early and eager adopter of
research-based approaches to farming, he was always ahead of his
neighbors in wringing a living from his land. These days America is the
breadbasket for the world, largely because we invested in agricultural
research and figured out how to disseminate the knowledge derived from
that research to those who farm. We are on the cusp of a transformation
of education to an evidence-based field that will have many
similarities to the changes in agriculture that my grandparents
experienced. The actions this Committee takes as it shapes the the
federal role in education research will have far reaching effects on
the quality and productivity of our schools, and through that on our
economy and future.
Mr. Chairman, the Education Sciences Reform Act, which originated
in this subcommittee in 2001 and currently governs the education
research enterprise at the Institute of Education Sciences within the
U.S. Department of Education, made great strides towards improving the
quality and independence of federally sponsored education research.
Prior to that legislation, the federal stewardship of education
research was widely viewed as a failure. To that point, in 1999 the
National Academies of Science came to the conclusion that:
One striking fact is that the complex world of education--unlike
defense, health care, or industrial production--does not rest on a
strong research base. In no other field are personal experience and
ideology so frequently relied on to make policy choices, and in no
other field is the research base so inadequate and little used.
Since the National Academies report and as a direct result of
Education Sciences Reform Act we have seen considerable progress in the
quality and relevance of education research. Evidence for this comes
from numerous sources, not the least of which is the Office of
Management and Budget. OMB's most recent program assessment of the
Institute of Education Sciences concluded that----
Since its creation by the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002,
IES has transformed the quality and rigor of education research within
the Department of Education and increased the demand for scientifically
based evidence of effectiveness in the education field as a whole.
Let me give you some examples of things we've learned from recent
education research that are very important to improving America's
schools and student achievement.
On teachers
Teachers vary dramatically in effectiveness--a very effective
compared to a very ineffective teacher can create achievement gains for
a child in one year that can wipe out a third of the achievement gap
between white and black students.
On-the-job performance is the single strong predictor of how good a
teacher will be in the future--almost every other observable
characteristic of teachers is at best only weakly predictive of how
they will perform in the classroom, e.g. whether they are regularly
certified or not, were trained in a school of education or not, got a
high or low score on a certification exam, received a lot of
professional development or a little, and were mentored as novices or
not tells us almost nothing about how effective they will be as
teachers.
Most professional development programs for teachers are a waste of
time and money.
On the organization of schools, choice, and competition
No excuses charter schools in urban areas do a dramatically better
job than traditional public schools in raising student achievement.
Armed with good information on school performance and the ability
to choose schools, low-income parents choose better schools than the
ones to which their school district would assign their children, and
their children do better academically as a result.
Schools that are subject to competition from other schools for
students improve more than schools not subject to competition.
On standards, accountability, and curriculum
The quality of state standards for what students should know bears
no relationship to student achievement--states with the best standards
can have low levels of achievement relative to states with weak
standards and vice-versa.
No Child Left Behind-type accountability for schools and districts
raises student achievement modestly, with the effects focused in
mathematics in the earlier grades.
Curriculum choices can make a sizable difference--for example the
difference between using the most effective vs. the least effective
elementary school mathematics curriculum, each costing about the same,
is as much as a third of a year of learning over the course of one
school year.
Presently available educational technology programs as used in
schools do not raise student achievement.
On the effectiveness of federally funded education programs
There is a long-list of federal education programs that have no
measurable effect on student outcomes, including:
The 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program
(afterschool )
Even Start
Head Start (for outcomes at the end of first grade)
Upward Bound
Reading First
On basic learning and instructional processes
Spacing the occasions when students are asked to study related
content rather than massing the study of that content into a short time
frame remarkably increases learning and retention.
Testing students on the content of their classroom assignments
produces substantially more learning than the same amount of time spent
restudying the material.
I could provide many more pages of example of things we know now
about education that we did not know 15 years ago. If knowledge is
power, we're in much better shape than we used to be and that augurs
well for the future.
The Education Sciences Reform Act is overdue for reauthorization. I
will not take you through a to-do list for reauthorizing the law, one
reason being that the National Board for Education Sciences has already
generated such a list and I'm supportive of the Board's
recommendations. Let me simply suggest three principles that should
underlie the reauthorization.
1. If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It--There are various groups, with
the American Educational Research Association being the most prominent,
that would have you make fundamental changes in the law that appeal to
their interests. They would, for example, have you change the
definitions of what constitutes rigorous research and evaluation to
lower the methodological bar their members confront when trying to
obtain federal grant money, and they would have you separate the
National Center for Education Statistics from the Institute of
Education Sciences in order to create another federal entity that they
can try to influence and with which they could curry favor. The key
question you should ask of advocates of any significant changes in the
language in the bill is, ``What evidence do you have you that the
current language has had bad effects?'' ESRA a pretty good piece of
legislation and most efforts to change it are going to come from
organizations that want a return to the wonderful days of yesteryear
when education research produced little of value except funding for
education researchers.
2. Independence Is Fundamental--One of the most important advances
in the Education Sciences Reform Act was to create a greater degree of
independence between the Department's research arm and the political
leadership of the Department. I led the Department's research office
for 8 years under two secretaries and multiple lesser political
appointees. I had good relationships with the political leadership of
the Department and we worked well together, but I needed every bit of
independence granted me by statute along with a fair amount of grit to
keep my office and its functions from being politicized. I think this
is in the nature of the beast rather than the personalities or
political parties involved. Anything you can do to further arm future
IES directors with independence from political direction will be
positive. At the same time, the IES director needs to be inside the
tent in order for the Department to benefit from education research and
to have education research informed by insights on federal policies.
3. The Regional Educational Lab Program (the RELs) Is Broken and
Should be Fixed--The REL program goes back to 1966 and the very first
Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Since then, year in and year
out, the RELs have pulled down a significant proportion of the total
federal investment in education R&D with little to show of value from
that investment and a lot to show that should be an embarrassment. I
don't think any amount of tinkering with the legislative language that
authorizes the RELs or aggressive intervention by the Institute of
Education Sciences can fix what is wrong with the program. But there is
a function the RELs are intended to serve that is desperately needed:
helping states answer questions about the effectiveness and
productivity of their own education programs using state administrative
data. The goal of having statewide longitudinal education databases in
every state was pursued vigorously in the George W. Bush
administration. The Obama administration has added substantially to
funding for this effort through the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act of 2009. In the near future all states will have data warehouses
with longitudinal student achievement data linked to a variety of
education input variables. However, having data available and being
able to use it are two different things. Only a few states have the
staff capacity within their state education office to conduct analyses
of longitudinal data to address policy questions. This means that most
policy initiatives fly blind, both in original design and subsequent
appraisal. RELs might be assigned through legislation to carry out this
task, but they have multiple masters (including the federal government,
their own boards, the governors and state legislatures in their
region), they vary substantially in their capabilities, and they have
no easy way to prioritize among various claims on their resources. It
would be much better in my view to eliminate the REL program and
substitute for it a research voucher program for state education
departments. The current REL budget would be split among states, taking
some account of state population but making sure that smaller states
receive a cut of the pie that is large enough to be useful. The states
could spend their vouchers to contract for research on issues of high
interest to them. The research plans and products would undergo
methodological review at IES to assure quality, but would otherwise be
independent of the Department. The current RELs could compete for this
work. If they could do the work well they would prosper. If they could
not they would have to go into another line of work. It is a
marketplace solution to a problem that has proven intractable to
previous legislative and administrative solutions.
4. You Get What You Pay For--Although federal budgetary support for
education research has increased in the last decade, it remains a
pittance when compared with levels of investment in research,
evaluation, and statistics in other areas of the economy. For example,
more than 40% of the discretionary budget of the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services is invested in knowledge production and
dissemination through the National Institutes of Health, the Centers
for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, and many other
operational components. In the U.S. Department of Education, the
corresponding investment is less than 1%. In education research and
development, no less than in R&D in health or transportation or
communication or energy or agriculture, the public gets what it pays
for.
Finally, I want to address the federal role in incorporating the
findings from educational research into program mandates. NCLB uses the
phrase ``scientifically-based research'' 111 times, and includes many
mandates for states and local education agencies to base their
practices on the findings from such research. The most extreme example
is the now defunct program, Reading First, which dictated how early
reading instruction was to be delivered at a very granular level based
on research findings. There is no evidence that children are reading
better as a result. It is a fundamental mistake, in my view, for
Congress to dictate how states and LEAs should use findings from
research. Even if the research were absolutely definitive, which it
seldom is; and Congress could translate it into legislation without
distortion, which it can't; and bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of
Education could implement it unimpeachably, which is unlikely; science
is dynamic. We shouldn't accept a process that requires Congress to
rewrite legislation in order to bring education practice in line with
evolving research findings.
Instead of telling states and local education agencies what they
should do and appealing to research as the justification, Congress
should focus on creating incentives for practitioners and policy makers
to want to incorporate findings from the best research into their
programs. Those incentives should be around the performance of schools.
If those who are responsible for the management of schools are held
accountable for schools' performance, and if research findings are both
readily consumable and provide a obvious boost to school performance,
then the research will be utilized. When my grandfather learned about
research findings that would give him a leg up in the yield from his
farm he didn't need to be told by big government that he had to base
his practices on that research. It was in his self-interest to do so
because he was accountable for earning a living from his farm.
Likewise, education providers will use research when it helps them do
something for which they're accountable.
There are two ways to fashion an accountability system that will
create a demand for research findings. One is top-down regulatory
accountability as we've seen in NCLB--Washington says, ``Here are your
targets for student achievement. If you don't meet them the following
unpleasant things will happen.'' The other approach is bottom-up market
place accountability--Parents are given choices of where to send their
children to school and good information on school performance. Funding
follows the child. Schools that aren't performing well lose students
and funding. The managers of those schools are motivated to improve
their performance and seek solutions, including those from good
research.
I'm in favor of the market-based approach to creating demand for
education research and I urge you to consider it in the context of the
reauthorization of ESEA.
We know much more about what works and what doesn't in education
than we did 15 years ago as a result of advances in research, but our
level of ignorance dwarfs our understanding by orders of magnitude. It
has been so in the early years of the transformation of other fields to
evidence-based practice. Moving education to a point at which our
research base is sufficient to assure a good education for every
student is the work of a generation, not of a few years. We've started
and we're moving in the right direction. I appreciate this Committee's
understanding of the importance of the work and the critical role the
federal government plays in advancing it.
______
Chairman Hunter. Thank you, Doctor.
Dr. Hoxby is recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DR. CAROLINE HOXBY, SCOTT AND DONYA BOMMER
PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY
Ms. Hoxby. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank
you very much for inviting me to testify. It is an honor.
The United States faces a bleak future if we do not improve
the education of our population. The American industries that
are still growing quickly and exporting are those that are most
dependent on having educated workers, and if our economy is to
grow fast enough to solve our fiscal problems we really need to
have a more productive education sector--in other words,
achieve more with the same amount of spending.
As the Education Sciences Research--Reform Act greatly
transformed education research and moved it much closer to the
successful models that we associate with the National Science
Foundation and the National Institutes for Health. Crucially,
ESRA stated that education research should meet high scientific
standards. Before ESRA, much of U.S. Department of Education-
funded research was wasted on fairly unreliable studies that
misinformed families and educators.
The most acute problem prior to ESRA was that Department of
Education-funded studies often made bold causal claims when
they used unscientific methods that really could not support
those claims. Claims of causation (such as stricter teacher
licensure raising student achievement), were made when the
study often showed nothing more than a correlation. And in that
particular case, it turns out that the correlation is not
particularly informative about the causal effect of teacher
licensure on achievement.
I want to make three main points. The first is that
although IES has greatly improved education research, vigilance
and continued improvements are needed. We must continue to
raise, not relax, scientific standards.
My second point is that the federal government,
universities, and philanthropic organizations should share the
responsibility for supporting education research. And my third
point is that the research functions of the U.S. Department of
Education should be the functions on which people can most
easily agree, and this is because all markets work better when
the people in them are informed, in this case parents,
students, and educators.
I think scientific research is one of our best hopes for
improving American education quickly without our having to
spend more money.
So IES has greatly improved education, but now is the time
to further raise standards, not relax them. I don't think high
scientific standards are so ingrained in the education research
community that IES can afford to take its foot off the gas.
Since its creation, IES has mainly promoted experimental
and quasi-experimental methods. These methods tend to produce
reliable results as long as they are used properly, and they
are not terribly difficult to use properly.
Perhaps something like 10 percent of randomized base
studies are unreliable, and that number might rise to about 25
percent with quasi-experimental studies. That the mistakes are
not corrected by the authors themselves does demonstrate,
however, that even experimental studies are not dummy-proof.
Moreover, there are many important questions that cannot be
answered with experimental studies and the remaining evaluation
methods require even more expertise to apply. This means that
IES, if it is to be able to answer all the questions of
interest to the American people, needs to develop greater
expertise.
Expert review panels are the main means by which IES
maintains high standards. While IES reviewing is not yet quite
the equal of NSF reviewing, in my experience it has made
remarkable progress, and I would say that the institute is now
in a virtuous cycle whereby good standards attract good
reviewers, and the good reviewers attract good proposals. It is
a virtuous cycle, but vigilance is needed because that can
easily break down into a vicious cycle where poor standards
attract poor proposals for research.
Another thing that IES is doing well but that requires
vigilance is data collection. IES has traditionally been very
strong in collecting survey-based data, but now most top-notch
education research is migrating away from survey data and
towards administrative data sets based on schools' records.
This is because most scientific methods now require the
completeness and the large scale of administrative records.
Unfortunately, our country is not at the frontier in this.
Most South American countries and most Northern European
countries have better administrative data sets than we do.
This is a problem because researchers tend to migrate
towards doing research on the things for which there is the
best data. For instance, right now I could write a much better
study of Dutch school choice reforms than I could of American
school choice reforms. Their data are just better.
The final thing that IES has done well that Dr. Whitehurst
also mentioned is really courageously contract for rigorous
studies of high profile programs. And I would cite as examples
the evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and
the evaluation of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers.
It is not acceptable for taxpayers to continue to pay for
programs year after year after year without having any rigorous
evidence on whether the programs actually work.
My second point is that responsibility for education
research should be shared by the federal government,
universities, and philanthropic organizations. Each one of
these entities plays a distinct role.
I have already mentioned that the federal government should
collect data, but it also needs to be a supporter of
university-based scholars, and I will return to this point.
Philanthropic organizations also play a key role, but unlike
the federal government, they should be mainly interested in the
evaluation of speculative, innovative programs, and that is
because they are using donors' money to evaluate programs
rather than using taxpayers' money.
Finally, universities: University-based researchers are
primarily responsible for developing new scientific methods,
validating them, and training people to use them. It is
essential that these researchers interact with the federal
government on a regular basis so that cutting edge methods are
known by researchers at IES.
Another important role for university researchers is to
work on topics that are currently politically unpopular. If
they had not been doing research on school choice in the 1990s
we wouldn't know very much about it today, and they didn't make
very many friends doing that research.
Finally, I said that the research functions of the U.S.
Department of Education should be the functions on which people
can most easily agree. Americans really do disagree on the
extent to which the federal government should mandate education
standards and policies, and many Americans believe that it
should be families who make most of the choices.
But really no one argues that anyone--the families,
educators, or policymakers--would be better off if they had
less access to reliable information, and that means that it is
one of our best hopes to improve education if we use scientific
information to spend smarter rather than just spending more.
Thank you.
[The statement of Dr. Hoxby follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Caroline Hoxby, Scott and Donya Bommer
Professor of Economics, Stanford University
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: My name is Caroline
Hoxby. I am the Scott and Donya Bommer Professor of Economics at
Stanford University and the Director of Economics of Education at the
National Bureau of Economic Research, the nation's leading nonprofit
economic research organization. I served for several years as a
presidential appointee to the National Board for Education Sciences.
Over my career, first at Harvard and recently at Stanford, I have
conducted research on a wide array of topics in elementary, secondary,
and higher education including class size, charter schools, college
tuition, school finance, and bilingual education. There is a common
theme in my research and the research of the many Ph.D.s I have
trained: we attempt to answer questions in education by applying the
most reliable, most advanced, most scientific methods to the best
available data.
Thank you for the invitation to testify. It is an honor to address
you, and I believe that today's topics are absolutely key to improving
education in the United States.
The United States faces a very bleak future if we do not figure out
how to quickly and continuously improve the education of our
population. The American industries that are still growing, thriving,
and exporting are the industries that are most dependent on educated
workers. If our economy is to grow fast enough to help solve our fiscal
crisis, we must have a smarter, more productive education sector, not
one that is simply more costly.
If this sounds like an insurmountable challenge, it is only because
Americans can point to so little educational improvement over the past
four decades that we, as a nation, have begun to believe that very
little improvement is possible. Contrast this with medicine or almost
any other field of applied knowledge. If we were offered the choice
between a medical procedure that relied on today's knowledge versus the
knowledge of 1970, we would--all of us--choose today's. We would
probably be ambivalent about today's schools versus the schools of
1970.
The difference between education and medicine is not that
improvement is impossible in education but possible in medicine. It is
not that all children are difficult to manage and all patients are easy
to manage. The difference is that education has not, until recently,
benefitted from rigorous, scientific research.
The Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA) of 2002 greatly
transformed education research, moving it much closer to the successful
models used by the National Science Foundation and the National
Institutes of Health. ESRA stated unequivocally that the Institute for
Education Sciences (IES) should facilitate research that met high,
scientific standards in order that it produce reliable results. This
was the crucial statement. Until ESRA, much of the U.S. Department of
Education's budget for research was wasted on studies that were widely
recognized to be unreliable. Not only was taxpayer money wasted, but
the Department unintentionally endorsed and promoted poor research
methods by funding low-standard studies.
Prior to ESRA, there were two particularly acute problems with
Department of Education-funded studies. The first was that they often
employed subjective measures of what schools did and what students
achieved. If a study relies on subjective measures, a researcher's
ideology often dictates what the data says. The second and more
pervasive problem was that Department-funded studies often made bold
causal claims despite the fact that they used methods that could not
possibly support such claims. Claims of causation--such as ``stricter
teacher licensure rules raise student achievement''--were made when the
study showed nothing more than a correlation. For instance, in my
example, schools with a higher percentage of teachers who are licensed
are schools that serve students who come from more advantaged
backgrounds. These students tend to have higher achievement regardless
of how their teachers are licensed. It turns out that the correlation
between teacher licensure and achievement tells us literally nothing
about the causal effect of teacher licensure on achievement. In short,
prior to ESRA, Department of Education-funded research routinely
provided misinformation to American families and schools.
I support the recommendations that the National Board for Education
Sciences has already made regarding the reauthorization of ESRA. Those
recommendations, however, are necessarily detail-oriented. In my
remaining time, I wish to provide a ``big picture'' perspective on
ESRA, IES, and--more broadly--the role of the federal government in
education research.
I have three main points.
1. IES has greatly improved education research since the enactment
of ESRA, but vigilance and continued improvements are needed. We cannot
afford to relax standards now. Rather, even higher scientific standards
should be the goal.
2. The federal government, universities, and philanthropic
organizations should share the responsibility for supporting education
research. This mixed model, somewhat peculiar to the U.S., is
essentially the right model. Each entity plays an important and
distinct role.
3. The data collection and research support functions of the U.S.
Department of Education should be the functions on which people with
diverse political views can agree. This is because no market functions
better in the absence of information on which parents, students, and
schools can make choices. Also, truly scientific research in education
is probably our best hope for improving the skills of Americans
quickly, with the expenditures we are already making.
Again, my first point is that IES has greatly improved education
but that now is the time to further raise, not relax, the scientific
standards that are the crucial contribution of ESRA. We are not yet in
the situation where high, scientific standards are so ingrained in the
education research community that IES can take its ``foot off the
gas.'' Since its creation, IES has consistently promoted scientific
methods by favoring studies that employ experimental and quasi-
experimental methods such as randomized controlled trials,
randomization built into pilot programs, and regression discontinuity.
These methods produce reliable results when used properly. That is why
they are also used in fields such as medicine and social program
evaluation. Vigilance is needed, however, because even the best
experiment is not ``dummy proof.'' IES should continue to raise the
bar, insisting on even better training in issues like attrition and
measurement that arise in experiments. Also, not all important
questions can be answered with experimental or quasi-experimental
methods, and IES therefore needs to develop greater expertise in other
evaluation methods, methods that produce reliable results only when
they are applied by researchers who are very highly trained.
Expert review panels are the key means by which IES gains access to
expert opinion, maintains high research standards, and improves its own
staff's knowledge of the latest methods and research. The Department of
Education's expert panels have improved greatly since the enactment of
ESRA. They now contain a sufficient percentage of well-trained experts
that the panel process can be said to, very often but not always, fund
research that produces reliable results. While IES reviewing is not yet
equal in quality to the NSF reviewing I have experienced, IES has made
remarkable progress. The Institute is only able to convene top experts
and attract high quality proposals because researchers believe that the
Department turned the corner with ESRA and now promotes scientifically-
grounded research. Top experts only participate in review processes in
which they believe. Top researchers, who can devote themselves to
issues other than education, only submit proposals to reviewers who are
expert enough to judge proposals well. In other words, IES is currently
in a virtuous cycle: higher scientific standards induce participation
by more expert reviewers. This leads better researchers to submit
higher quality proposals, and the cycle continues. Vigilance is
necessary, however: the virtuous cycle can easily break down and become
a vicious cycle in which poor standards lead to poor participation, at
which point the review process attracts only poor proposals.
Another thing that IES is doing well but that requires vigilance is
data collection. IES, through its National Center for Education
Statistics, has been collecting survey data on students and schools for
decades. These data tend to be well-respected--this is one function of
the Department's research arm that was high quality prior to ESRA.
However, top-notch education research has migrated away from survey
data and towards detailed administrative data. About 75 percent of
studies published by top applied journals now rely on administrative
data--datasets based on schools recording what a student does, what
teachers and policies and classrooms he encounters, and what outcomes
he attains, both in the short-term (test scores) and long-term (college
graduation, earnings, and so on). The reason that research is migrating
from survey to administrative data is that modern scientific methods
that produce reliable estimates often require the large scale and
completeness of administrative data. While the U.S. continues to have
some of the world's best survey data on education, our country has
fallen far behind the frontier in administrative data on education.
Currently, most northern European countries and some South American
countries have substantially better administrative data than the U.S.
This matters because top researchers are motivated just as much by the
availability of data that allow them to write excellent studies as they
are motivated by funding. Thus, researchers are increasingly drifting
away from the analysis of U.S. education policies and toward the
analysis of other countries' education policies. To be concrete, I
could now write a study of English, Dutch, or Swedish school choice
reforms using better data than are available to me in the U.S. IES is
making valiant efforts, which I praise, to create and sponsor stronger
administrative databases, but this is another area in which continued
exertion is needed. Integrating states' data and data from its own
agencies (like the National Student Loan system) is probably the
cheapest and quickest way for IES to improve education research.
A final thing that IES has done well under ESRA is courageously
contract for rigorous studies of high profile programs and programs on
which the federal government already spends substantial money. I would
cite, as examples, the evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship
Program, the evaluation of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers,
and the evaluations of Professional Development programs in mathematics
and reading. It simply does not make sense for U.S. taxpayers to fund
programs year after year in the absence of scientific evidence of their
effects, and findings from such rigorous studies should play an
important role in any debate about their future. You may have observed
that I said these contracts were courageous. They were. When one
conducts a study using strong, scientific methods, one cannot know how
it will turn out. It is always possible that some constituency will be
angered by the results, but--then--that is the entire point of doing
research. If we could accurately choose education programs simply by
knowing ``in our hearts'' that they were right, we would already have
very successful schools.
There are a few areas in which IES has great intentions but is not
having the effect for which it hopes. The Regional Education
Laboratories and the What Works Clearinghouse are examples.
My second point is that support and responsibility for education
research should be shared by the federal government, universities, and
philanthropic organizations. In the U.S., we have a successful model in
which each of these entities plays an important and distinct role.
While I would never argue that our model is perfect, I am routinely
struck by how well it functions when I am abroad and experience other
countries' education research. A similar mixed model of support is used
for medical research.
The federal government should play a few roles in education
research. First, and most obviously, it should collect and make
available accurate data on all aspects of education that can be
measured: expenditures, revenues, achievement, personnel, curriculum,
school policy, and so on. Because there are enormous economies of scale
and scope in data collection and because cross-state comparisons are so
important to research, it is important that the federal government and
not just state governments collect data and make it available in a
timely way.
Second, the federal government should publish descriptive reports
on American education. The word descriptive is important because such
reports are part of the government's duty to disseminate data, rather
than a duty to do causal research. A report that describes where
English Learners enroll is descriptive. This must be distinguished from
research that attempts to test a causal hypothesis such as whether
bilingual education raises English Leaners' achievement. The federal
government is not in a good position to conduct causal research itself.
This is because such research requires methods that need expert review,
and the government cannot both convene the reviewers and be the entity
that is reviewed. In the same way, we would not want an accused person
to convene his own jury. A good review process requires independence.
Third, the federal government should contract for highly reliable
evaluations of the education programs it supports. These evaluations
cost only a small fraction of what is spent on the programs themselves.
For this small expenditure, a good evaluation can save taxpayers vast
amounts of money, either by providing the evidence that improves a
partially-successful program or by providing the evidence that gives
Congress the grounds for abolishing an unsuccessful program. The
federal government should be prepared to fund evaluations of its
programs with little financial help from universities or
philanthropies. This is because the goal of such evaluations is not to
be innovative or to explore new questions. The goal is to produce clear
answers to well-specified questions regarding established programs. The
ideal evaluation should employ methods that are well-validated that the
evaluation is boring in every way except for the results. Fortunately,
in the U.S., we have active competition for such contracts among a good
number of organizations: Mathematica, Abt, Rand, Westat, AIR, MDRC, and
so on.
Fourth, the federal government should share in the support of (but
not be the exclusive supporter of) research by university-based and
similar scholars. These are the people who develop new methods, who ask
questions that are still somewhat speculative, and who conduct ``basic
research'' in education. I will return to this point.
Philanthropic institutions also play a vital role in education
research. In some ways, their role parallels the federal role except
that philanthropies should focus more on trial programs that are
innovative and less on established programs funded by the government.
This is because the government uses money that taxpayers are obliged to
pay while philanthropic organizations use money that their donors
freely give. If a philanthropy spends money on a speculative
educational program that does not succeed, the consequences fall on its
donors--people who are affluent enough to accept this risk in return
for the prospect of developing exciting new programs that benefit
society. Philanthropies can obtain reliable evaluations by contracting
with the same organizations that contract with the federal government.
And, like the government, philanthropies should share in supporting
research by university-based and similar scholars.
Let me now turn to the role of university-based researchers. As I
mentioned, university-based researchers are primarily responsible not
only for developing new and more scientific methods of evaluation, but
also testing them, validating them in an array of applications, and
training people to use them. For instance, university researchers
developed the cutting-edge methods to deal with attrition and non-
compliance in randomized controlled trials. They also developed the
quasi-experimental methods that are currently the workhorses of
evaluation. In addition, university-based researchers are almost
entirely responsible for conducting basic research--research that has
no immediate policy relevance but that provides fundamental information
on which policies should be ultimately based. For example, I study peer
effects--how students' achievement is affected by the other students
who share the classroom with them. This basic research is a fundamental
that we need to evaluate policies like school choice that affect which
students are in each school. Another good example of basic research is
the recent spate of studies that show (a) that different teachers have
very different effects on achievement and (b) that a teacher's effect
is not related to her credentials. This basic research is a fundamental
we need for thinking about teacher pay incentives, teacher training,
teacher tenure, and policies that affect which teachers end up in which
schools. Finally, university researchers should be primarily
responsible for investigating educational programs that are
speculative, still under development, or implemented on a purely trial
basis. University researchers must also do the uncomfortable work of
analyzing programs that are currently unpopular with the administration
and/or philanthropies. As an example of a purely trial program designed
and investigated by university researchers, I would point to the recent
study that shows that students are more likely to enroll in college if
their family can automatically file the Free Application for Federal
Student Aid when it files its taxes. As an example of unpopular
research, I would point to studies of school choice from the 1990s.
Researchers who worked on such topics did not win many friends in the
education establishment, but we are now glad that the studies exist
because they inform us about how to structure choice policies.
I have said that the federal government and philanthropies should
share in the support of university-based education research. Why? If
the government and philanthropies do not have ``skin in the game'',
they will not attract university researchers to study the policies or
develop the methods that are important to them (the government and
philanthropies). They will not attract top experts to review the
contract-based studies they support. They will not learn about cutting-
edge research and cutting-edge methods in real time. It is the nature
of cutting-edge work that you cannot learn about it just by reading an
article after the fact. You need to interact with researchers--ask them
questions, pose alternatives.
Universities themselves should also share in supporting education
research. Why? If we want university-based researchers to invent better
methods and conduct basic research, they need to be rewarded for these
activities. No one is better at generating these rewards than
universities themselves. This is because universities' constituents
give them incentives to create knowledge that is original and a public
good, as all basic research is.
By sharing in the support for educational research, the federal
government, universities, and philanthropists also share in setting the
research agenda. This is a good thing. Innovation never benefits from
one entity having a monopoly on what questions are interesting.
My third and final point is brief. The data collection and research
support functions of the U.S. Department of Education should be the
functions on which people can most easily agree. Americans tend to
disagree on the degree to which the federal government should mandate
educational standards and impose policies on schools. Many Americans
believe that families and local communities should make education
choices for themselves. But, it is hard to argue that anyone--families,
communities, schools, or federal policy makers--will make better
choices if they have less access to reliable information. As I stated
at the outset, Americans badly need to be better educated--and soon--
because our economic growth and well-being depend on this. I truly
believe that our best hope is to improve education by spending
smarter--using scientific methods to identify which programs and
policies are effective and which are counterproductive or just a waste
of money.
______
Chairman Hunter. Thanks. I think we can all agree, too,
that 5 minutes really is not that long to talk, is it? Not very
long.
Mr. Fleischman?
STATEMENT OF MR. STEVE FLEISCHMAN, DEPUTY EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
EDUCATION NORTHWEST
Mr. Fleischman. Chairman Hunter, Mr. Holt, members of the
subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to offer
testimony. I think that what I say will continue in the theme
of trying to provide better evidence for better decisions.
I am Steve Fleischman. I am the deputy executive officer of
Education Northwest. I have been involved in the promotion of
evidence-based education for more than 15 years.
I believe, however, that my most important qualification
for offering testimony today is that I am a former middle and
high school teacher. When I entered teaching as a second
profession in the mid-1980s there was almost no evidence that I
could find to help me manage my class better, teach my history
lessons more effectively, improve the writing skills of my
students, on and on. We have come a long way since then, but
not far enough.
Before becoming a teacher I was a business person, and I
often think in market terms. To me, the challenge in building
an effective education research enterprise is to create a
market that has mechanisms to supply high quality research,
create demand for it, and ease its use.
Peter Drucker often observed that there is no business
without a customer. Simply put, I believe that we will not have
an education system in which reliable evidence is widely used
to drive decision making unless and until we provide educators
the research they want and need.
Recent studies on research use by educators, including one
conducted by my own organization, document this research-to-use
gap. Three findings from our study, however, suggest important
principles to narrow this gap.
One: Research should be contextualized. The observation
that all politics is local has its equivalent in the
observation that all research is local. That is, participants
in our study expressed a strong preference for research
evidence that is linked to local contacts.
Two: Research should be easy to read, absorb, and apply.
Participants expressed preferences in how studies should be
presented, including the report should be brief and written in
nontechnical language.
Three: Research often requires translation and transmission
by intermediaries. Intermediaries were identified by the
participants as unbiased organizations and individuals that can
help locate, sort, and prioritize the available evidence.
IES has taken significant strides in promoting an increase
in the amount of rigorous evidence available to educators. As
well, regional educational labs and the What Works
Clearinghouse have begun to move forward the relevance and
usefulness agenda.
Some of the promising practices and developments initiated
by IES working with other program offices of the Department of
Education include the production of so-called practice guides;
the holding of REL bridge events; the Ask A REL information
services; coordination across the Department of Education in
fields such as research, development, and technical assistance
projects; and an increased focus in meeting the real-world
improvement needs of education stakeholders that I think is
exemplified in the new REL competition statement of work.
My suggestions regarding how ESRA can be improved in the
next reauthorization result from many conversations, including
those held by members of Knowledge Alliance, a trade
association of leading education R&D organizations. These
recommendations are: One, engage consumers. The most powerful
way to increase research use is to engage the prospective
consumers of evidence in defining the practical problems that
should be analyzed, designing the modes in which findings will
be presented, and supporting ways for the evidence to be
applied effectively in the field.
Two: Pay attention to implementation. Research consistently
demonstrates that even the best programs fail to provide their
intended benefits if poorly implemented. Therefore, greater
focus should be devoted to learning more about how strong
programs and practices can be implemented well.
Three: Support intermediaries. As noted above, research
consumers often turn to intermediaries who serve as trusted
sources that help sort through the evidence. Many of these
trusted sources represent projects and individuals either
directly support through current federal research, development,
and technical assistance infrastructure or interact with this
infrastructure.
Fourth and finally: Promote the coordination of U.S.
Department of Education program offices. Taking the point of
view of consumers of evidence, education stakeholders should
have a much clearer idea of who to contact and what services
are available to meet their evidence needs.
I believe that when Congress passed ESRA and created IES it
had a vision that science, properly conducted and effectively
applied, could be a significant engine in improving education
in this country. As Mr. Holt has written and argued, recent
history demonstrates that investments in R&D can drive the
economy forward. Yet, the Department of Education spends less
than 1 percent of its budget on R&D, one of the smallest
investments of any federal agency.
Ongoing federal investment in education research enterprise
will be required if we are to achieve the promise that all
students will receive a quality education that prepares them
for fulfilling lives as contributing citizens in our society.
Thank you.
[The statement of Dr. Fleischman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Steve Fleischman, Deputy Executive Officer,
Education Northwest; Director, Regional Educational Laboratory
Northwest
Chairman Hunter, Ranking Member Kildee, and Members of the
Subcommittee: Thank you for this opportunity to offer testimony as you
consider how education research can help to promote the identification
and use of effective programs to support students and teachers.
I am Steve Fleischman, the deputy executive officer of Education
Northwest. We are a nonprofit organization created in Oregon more than
45 years ago to apply research to improve education in the Northwest,
and across the country. Some of the projects that we conduct on behalf
of the U.S. Department of Education, and which provide part of the
experience base for my testimony include the Regional Educational
Laboratory (REL) Northwest, Northwest Regional Comprehensive Center,
and the Region X Equity Assistance Center.
I have been involved in the promotion of evidence-based education
for more than 15 years. In the last decade, with different
organizations, I have participated in a variety of U.S. Department of
Education projects to provide educators better evidence, including
serving as the first communications director of the What Works
Clearinghouse, director of a project to provide education
decisionmakers with consumer reporting on the quality and effectiveness
of school reform models, and senior leader of the Doing What Works
project. Currently, I serve as director of REL Northwest. These and
other projects in which I have been engaged have given me insight into
the need for better evidence in education that helps identify and
implement effective programs and practices. This need led to the
passage of the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA) in 2002, and the
creation of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES).
I believe, however, that my most important qualification for
offering testimony is that I am a former middle and high school
teacher. When I entered teaching as a second profession in the mid-
1980s I did what most other new teachers do: scramble desperately for
any support to help do my job. One of the places I turned to was
research literature on best practices. There was almost no evidence I
could find to help me manage my class better, teach my history lessons
more effectively, improve the writing skills of my students, or do any
of the other things I needed to do to be a good teacher. This
experience has been the single most important one in helping to guide
my actions for the past 15 years, as I've been increasingly involved in
the education research enterprise. Although the situation is much
better today than a quarter of a century ago, we have a long way to go
before education research fulfills its promise as an engine of
educational improvement.
Before going further in my testimony on the topic, I would like to
clarify how I will use the term ``education research.'' My experience
is that when making decisions, educators in the field are focused on
``evidence use'' which can include formal research, program
evaluations, reviews of bodies of research, and various data. That is,
educators turn to many sources of ``evidence'' when searching for
guidance on policy and practice, formal research being only one of
them. In this testimony, I will use this more expansive conception of
``education research'' that encompasses the sources just mentioned.
Start with the consumer
Before becoming a teacher, I was a business person, and I often
think in market terms. To me, the challenge in building an effective
education research enterprise is to create a market that has mechanisms
to supply high quality research, create demand for it, and ease its
use. Peter Drucker, the revered management thinker, often observed that
there is no business without a customer. Simply put, I believe that we
will not have an education system in which reliable evidence is widely
used to drive decision making unless and until we provide educators the
research that they want and need.
The past decade has seen advances in increasing the supply of
rigorous education research as well as some closing of the ``research-
to-use'' gap. In my testimony I will suggest ways that federal
investments and action can help to further close this gap.
Recent studies on research use by educators point to this ongoing
challenge. For example, in a 2009 study that my organization and others
conducted for the William T. Grant Foundation, a wide ranging group of
education practitioners and policymakers observed that:
There is a gulf between research design and real-world
practice, which often results in findings that have limited
applicability.
They are challenged to apply research because of their own
lack of knowledge and skills in acquiring and interpreting research.
Numerous obstacles exist to research use, including ``time
constraints, the volume of research evidence available, the format in
which it is presented, and the difficulty in applying research to their
own situations.''
They are often skeptical about research and concerned that
it is conducted and reported for ulterior motives or can be shaped to
``say anything.''
Research is often not timely.
Most troubling is the fact that none of the study participants
could identify any ``breakthrough'' research or ``cite any findings
that they feel had a dramatic effect on practice or policy.''
Principles for increased research use
Our study cited above and others point to current gaps, but also to
ways to improve the connection between research and practice. Three
findings from our study suggest important principles to narrow the
``research-to-use'' gap:
1. Research should be contextualized. The observation that ``all
politics is local,'' has its education research equivalent, in which
``all research is local.'' Participants in our study expressed a strong
preference for research evidence that is linked to local contexts.
Thus, for research to be seen as useful and to be used, it must be
contextualized. One way to accomplish this is to involve education
research consumers in studies from the very beginning: in setting the
questions, designing the studies, and writing reports that answer
questions of local interest.
2. Research should be easy to read, absorb, and apply. Participants
expressed preferences in how studies should be presented, including
that reports should be brief and written in non-technical language.
This principle suggests that much more attention needs to be paid to
communicating research effectively. Otherwise, potentially important
research findings might not be read at all.
3. Research often requires ``translation'' and ``transmission'' by
intermediaries. Intermediaries were identified by the participants as
``unbiased organizations and individuals that can help locate, sort,
and prioritize the available research.'' Among examples identified by
participants were ``research institutions, professional associations,
partners, coalitions, peers, networks, and constituents.'' A key
implication is that it is important to find ways to strengthen the role
of intermediaries by making sure they have the knowledge, skills, and
resources to play this important role.
The IES track record on promoting research use
Since the passage of ESRA nearly a decade ago, IES has taken
significant strides in promoting an increase in the amount of rigorous
evidence available to education decision makers. It has improved the
quality of quantitative research and data through various mechanisms
including grant competitions, sponsored research, and the operation of
the National Center for Education Statistics, Regional Educational
Laboratory (REL) system, and the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). While
some of these mechanisms have focused largely on increasing research
and data rigor others, particularly the RELs and the WWC, have begun to
move forward the relevance and usefulness agenda necessary to meet
consumer needs and desires for evidence.
Some of the promising practices and developments initiated by IES,
working with other program offices of the Department of Education,
include:
The production of Practice Guides. These guides, currently
numbering 14 and largely produced by the WWC, offer practical
recommendations based on the best available evidence. Developed by
panels of nationally recognized researchers and practitioners, they
offer actionable recommendations, strategies for overcoming potential
practice roadblocks, and an indication of the strength of evidence
supporting each recommendation. Topics range from turning around low-
performing schools and reducing high school dropouts, to using data to
support instructional decision making and structuring out-of-school
time to improve academic achievement.
The holding of REL Bridge Events. These are in-person or
webinar events held for education stakeholders across the nation by the
10 RELs to share and discuss the recommendations of the Practice Guides
and other rigorous and relevant evidence. The events have proven to be
highly popular and represent a key mechanism to link educators to the
``best available'' research-based guidance on critical topics of
regional or local interest.
Ask A REL information services. Every REL offers this free
service that allows education stakeholders to call or e-mail with their
questions of practice. These questions are posed by state officials,
school board members, superintendents, principals, teachers, parents,
and others seeking to find our ``what the research says'' on particular
topics. The requests, which are turned around quickly, often result in
research literature reviews that are then shared with other
stakeholders.
Coordination across the U.S. Department of Education
research, development, and technical assistance infrastructure. Centers
and projects sponsored by various Department program offices have come
together more regularly than in the past to hold joint activities that
provide stakeholders needed information. One example was a series of
regional events on School Improvement Grants (SIG) jointly sponsored by
the RELs and Comprehensive Centers this past year. In another recent
example, REL Northwest worked together recently with two regional
comprehensive centers and the Center on Innovation and Improvement to
bring together state officials and leaders from rural SIG schools in
five states to learn about effective practices to turn around their
schools.
An increased focus of the REL system on meeting the
improvement needs of education stakeholders. In a highly encouraging
development, the current IES competition for new REL contractors that
will launch a new five-year cycle of REL activity beginning in January
2012 is focused on the creation of research and data-use partnerships
with educators and policymakers in the field. These so-called
``research alliances'' will be long-lasting, help to set the research
agendas for the RELs so that they concentrate on real world ``problems
of practice,'' and provide capacity building so that alliance partners
are increasingly able to conduct their own research and data-analysis
projects. Without sacrificing rigor, these alliances will go a long way
in deeply engaging consumers of research in its production and use.
Considerations for ESRA reauthorization
Discussions in the education research community regarding how ESRA
can be improved in its next reauthorization have been ongoing in the
field for several years. For example, Knowledge Alliance, a trade
association of leading education research and development (R&D)
organizations that I currently chair, has engaged its members and
experts in the field in this discussion. As well, my own organization's
Board of Directors composed of nearly 30 education stakeholders across
the states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington, has been
discussing this issue over the past two years. The considerations below
are suggestions that have arisen from these conversations. As Congress
considers reauthorization of ESRA, I recommend that you keep in mind
the following goals which might result in new mechanisms and practices
or the strengthening of current ones to better connect evidence and
practice:
Engage consumers. The most powerful way to increase
research use is to engage the prospective consumers of evidence in
defining the practical problems that should be analyzed, designing the
modes in which findings will be presented, and supporting ways for the
evidence to be applied effectively in the field. This should include
building consumer capacity to find, judge, and apply evidence that is
provided at the federal level and beyond. Key consumers on which to
focus capacity building efforts might be state education agency and
local district staff who lead research and data analysis tasks.
Finally, this effort might include studies and other efforts to
determine how to better serve education consumers' evidence needs.
Pay attention to implementation. The identification and
sharing of effective programs and practices represents only part of an
effort to promote an evidence-based education system. Research
consistently demonstrates that even the best programs fail to provide
their intended benefits if poorly implemented. Therefore, greater focus
should be devoted to learning more about how strong programs and
practices can be implemented well.
Support intermediaries. As noted above, research consumers
often turn to intermediaries who serve as trusted sources that help
sort through the evidence to find that which is most relevant for
consumer decision making needs. Many of these trusted sources represent
projects and individuals either directly supported through the current
federal research, development, and technical assistance infrastructure
or that interact with this infrastructure. Examples of the latter are
associations of state education officials, school boards,
administrators, principals, teachers, and education journalists. These
intermediary organizations must be engaged and supported systematically
if we are to improve the connection between research and practice.
Promote the coordination of U.S. Department of Education
program offices. There are notable examples of how program offices such
as IES, the Offices of Elementary and Secondary Education, Innovation
and Improvement, Special Education Programs, and others work together
to promote evidence use. However, there is much more that can be done
to promote this coordination. Taking the point of view of consumers,
education stakeholders should have a much clearer idea of who to
contact and what services are available to meet their evidence needs.
Applying this customer-based approach would require the U.S. Department
of Education to structure its information and support activities in a
more coordinated way to promote an evidence-based system.
Federal investments in education research can pay dividends
This testimony has focused largely on the supply side of the
research use equation, in the hopes that if research can be made more
timely, relevant, and useful, it will more likely factor into decision
making. However, there other aspects of ``market building'' that I have
only mentioned briefly in this testimony that require a federal role.
For example, ongoing federal communication regarding the importance of
evidence use sends a powerful signal in the system to promote its use.
Emphasis in federal education technical assistance that increases the
capacity and support provided for evidence use increases the likelihood
that research and data will be used effectively.
In the early 1950s, parents in this country had to worry about
their child contracting Polio, the dreaded disease of the day. In 1952,
the year before I was born more than 3,000 children, a record number,
died from the disease. Today, thanks to significant investments in
scientific research and effective public health campaigns, Polio no
longer exists in this country. However, what does still exist in
America are far too many crippling conditions such as students who
cannot read by grade three, drop out before completing high school, or
reach college unprepared for success. Like Polio, these conditions
demand a substantial investment in research and then translation of
that research into practical action.
I believe that when Congress passed ESRA and created the Institute
of Education Sciences, it had a vision that science, properly conducted
and effectively applied, could be a significant engine in improving
education in this country. Further, as Mr. Holt, a member of this
subcommittee, has argued, recent history ``demonstrates that
investments in R&D can drive the economy forward.'' Yet, the Department
of Education spends less than 1 percent of its budget on R&D, one of
the smallest investments of any federal agency.
Ongoing federal investment in the education research enterprise
will be required if we are to achieve the promise that all students
will receive a quality education that prepares them for fulfilling
lives as contributing citizens in our society.
In closing, thank you for this opportunity to offer testimony
today.
references
Coburn, C.E., Honig, M.I., & Stein, M.K. (in press). What is the
evidence on district's use of evidence? In J. Bransford, L.
Gomez, D. Lamn, & N. Vye (Eds.) Research and Practice: Towards
a Reconciliation. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.
Fleischman, S. (2009). User-driven research in education: A key element
in promoting evidence-based education. In W. Bottcher, J.N.
Dicke, & H. Siegler (Eds.), Evidenzbasierte bildung (pp. 69-
82). Munster, Germany: Waxmann.
Fleischman, S., Harmon, J.A., & Darwin, M.J. (2007). Promoting
evidence-based practice and better student outcomes through
improved consumer reporting. Journal of Education for Students
Placed at Risk, 12(1), 1-7.
Fleischman, S. (2006). Moving to evidence-based professional practice.
Educational Leadership, 63(6), 87-90.
Nelson, S.R., Leffler, J.C., & Hansen, B.A. (2009) Toward a research
agenda for understanding and improving the use of research
evidence. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Educational
Laboratory (now Education Northwest).
Tseng, V. (2010). Learning about the use of research to inform
evidence-based policy and practice: Early lessons and future
directions. William T. Grant Foundation 2009 Annual Report.
William T. Grant Foundation, New York, NY.
______
Chairman Hunter. Thank you.
I would now like to recognize Dr. Smith for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DR. ERIC SMITH, FORMER FLORIDA COMMISSIONER OF
EDUCATION, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I'm honored
to be before all of you this morning on what I consider to be
an extraordinarily important issue. I will first state that I
am not a researcher, but I am a consumer of research.
I have been a classroom teacher, school administrator,
district administrator, and B.S. in Newport News, Virginia, and
a state commissioner, and have had a strong belief in the work
of people like Ron Edmonds, and others, that give this notion
that when leadership chooses to make a difference with the
outcome of children, when they are committed to making that
difference they will do so wherever it is important to them to
do so.
It is the fabric of the basis of accountability. That
accountability hinges on the ability to make smart decisions
about what you do in schools and classrooms and districts and
states. To call yourself a reformer requires that you have the
ability to move systems in a way that brings with it progress
and improves student achievement and student outcomes.
Over the years I have had the opportunity to not only work
as a consumer, but also been asked to serve as the chairman of
the Title 1 Review Committee. For a good number of years, I
worked with Russ Whitehurst and others, and that was an
exciting time for me.
That was a time when I did see, in my view, dramatic
improvement in the way we approach the question of research,
what is important for a high school principal to do in their
schools? What is important for a district superintendent that
is under pressure on outcome and achievement to modify and
change the way they deliver reading and mathematics?
One of my questions that I had of Russ one day late in the
afternoon was, in this great nation, can't we tell our
educators what the most effective method of teaching
mathematics is? Should it still be a question out there for
those that have to and are expected to deliver every day?
So it has been excited to serve in those capacities.
Brilliant people and great passion around trying to find the
right answers.
For the consumer there are two big questions, though, that
get divided--it is kind of inside baseball to me--divided
between how research is conducted and the quality of the
research, and then how that research is disseminated. To the
superintendent, to the building principal, the classroom
teacher, those lines are blurred, and it is kind of an inside
discussion about how that works. All they know is they want an
answer and they can't find it.
We have seen dramatic, dramatic improvement, and I would,
part of my recommendation is to continue to fund the kind of
research that has been done. But often it comes out rigid, it
comes out, in order to get it right, to have all the controls
in place, it becomes so different from the real world it
becomes hard for a practitioner to put it into place.
What do I do with this? Those aren't my classrooms. That is
not my district.
And so that translation, whether it be fault of the
research and the way it is conducted or it is a failure of the
translation and the dissemination of the research, there is
still--we are better; we have farther to go. There is more work
to be done, and those lines are blurred.
So I would move, in my remaining 1 minute and 27 seconds,
to talk specifically about some recommendations. One is that--I
will start with my second recommendation in my written remarks
first--is that I do think we need to be very thoughtful, very
wise about broadening our scope on how we might gain
information; I wouldn't say even conduct research, but gain
information about effective practices. I think we can make them
more relevant, more timely, and more cost effective by
broadening our views.
There are places and things that need to be under a
rigorous scientific model and approach, but as I stated in my
comments about the application of PSAT, it came from a
relational table on the back of a document produced by--that I
get annually. It was translating that that makes a difference,
so, and as a result we translated data, information about a
product, and we made lives different for tens of thousands of
children across America--dare I say, hundreds of thousands of
children across America. So there are other ways of knowing
what is important.
On that note, on the research side it is important that
practitioners, the consumers, help to drive the problems that
they have today and the conditions that exist today, and that
researchers help inform the best way to get at that answer but
look at it from a broad view.
Second, on dissemination, it is hard to get a
superintendent or a principal's time, or a commissioner's time.
They are swamped. And so the ability to go through existing
channels where practitioners will be there and show up, if it
is not important to be on the keynote panel it probably isn't
important to those out in the field. So the dissemination
process, how that is done, is critically important.
And I would just finally say is that what this committee,
the question this committee is asking, is everything. It is
about reauthorization. It is about accountability. It is about
school reform. It is about our nation's future.
Our ability to know what works and how to get it in the
classrooms is of critical importance today for children sitting
in classrooms at this moment. Thank you very much.
[The statement of Dr. Smith follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Eric J. Smith, Former Florida Commissioner of
Education, Florida Department of Education
I appreciate the opportunity to address this committee about a
topic I find to be extraordinarily important to our nation's academic
progress; research on the tools and strategies that we give our
teachers to use in the classroom. I am speaking to you not as a
researcher but as a consumer of research on educational strategies,
tools and practices. In my career I have had the honor of serving 7
years as a classroom teacher, 8 years as a high school administrator,
17 years as a superintendent and 4 years as a state commissioner of
education. Throughout my career, in each of these positions, I have
been constantly searching for tools, strategies and practices that had
some independent evidence that if properly used would result in
positive outcomes for children. Said another way, I have always been
searching for those tools and techniques that are unique, that can be
used in a single classroom or used on a large scale and will generally
result in positive achievement gains for children. To be blunt it has
been a frustrating search. There are numerous approaches to choose from
and as a consumer you will always be told that educational practices
and tools are aligned to your standards, are research based and you
will always be shown data that is intended to demonstrate that an
instructional approach is extremely successful in raising achievement
levels. Unfortunately there is still far too little independent
research or information on the impact of various approaches to student
learning.
My interest is in trying to find better information on the
effectiveness of educational tools and approaches to help teachers,
administrators and governing bodies to make more informed strategic
decisions on how to improve student achievement. The question of
effectiveness and impact is central to discussions of accountability,
and should be part of the foundation in the development of reform
strategies. School reform and accountability have as a premise that
leadership can shape and control for academic outcomes by thoughtful
strategic planning and execution. There is also an implicit assumption
that the needs of individual children can be addressed through the
careful planning of practices and strategies as well. Common variables
include conditions of time, resources and quality instruction using
high quality materials. The primary classroom materials chosen and
given to the teacher to deliver the level of instruction required is an
essential component. An example of connecting instructional strategy to
the needs of individual students is found in the emerging development
of adaptive testing. Adaptive testing is showing great promise in
helping educators to be much more student centric in the delivery of
instruction and in meeting the individual needs of students. Reform
strategies such as these should be built around the type of work that
is to be done in the classroom. Such strategies should be framed by the
selection of classroom practices and selection of primary and
supporting classroom materials. Those that make the decisions about
classroom instructional practices and materials should be held
accountable for their decisions. I have been in classrooms where a
school or district has selected an instructional strategy with
supportive tools and you will see teachers who have so little
confidence in the approach, that they secretively have hoards of other
materials to do the job. The quality of instructional tools and
approaches matters to teachers and matters to students. Some help, some
don't offer much and it can be assumed that some may do harm.
So my interest in the question of what classroom practices and
tools are effective resulted in me being selected to chair the Title 1
Independent Review Panel. It was an extraordinary experience. My
colleagues on the panel were both brilliant and passionate about the
issue of instructional improvement. I credit the work of Russ
Whitehurst and others for pioneering a new way to look at the process
of educational research. It was bold and aggressive and had the intent
to base findings on a scientifically rigorous research methodology. As
superintendent in Charlotte, our children benefited from much of these
early efforts to redefine the research. In Charlotte we had no district
wide strategy for reading instruction. You could go into an elementary
school and reading would be taught differently at the opposite ends of
a hallway. Strategically we needed to go to a district adoption so all
teachers could be supported through professional development and
adequate materials. But the question was: what approach would be most
helpful for students? National research helped us make that decision
and it was the right decision, reading achievement went up
dramatically. Down the road in Florida, at about the same time, the
entire state was making decisions about reading. Those decisions were
also being informed by quality research and the results over the last
decade have also been extraordinary.
But often a strict application of scientific research has
significant challenges; the selection of the control group can be
difficult if you are fairly certain that the intervention will be
beneficial. There is also difficulty in maintaining the fidelity of the
experimental group in a real situation and the process is slow and
expensive. The instructional strategies will ultimately be used in
states, schools and districts that don't have strict and rigid
structures, kids come and go in classrooms as do teachers, schedules
get interrupted, materials sometimes are in short supply and
professional development can be delivered with varying quality. As a
result, the nature of the research often fails to mirror reality. The
research methodology has the tendency to be cumbersome in its
implementation and lead to findings that are rigid and artificial. As a
result, the research has limited relevance to the real conditions found
in schools and classrooms.
Research that is available is also proving difficult to disseminate
and get in to the hands of those who have the responsibility for making
educational decisions. The regional labs are of widely different
quality and unfortunately are not the ``go to'' place for information
on meaningful research. Some of the labs do very good work but the
quality and reputation varies, and as a result, they don't form a
network of dissemination that provides national coverage. The What
Works Clearinghouse is making good strides in dissemination, but is
limited on bridging the research to application challenge, research
findings are slow to become available and because of the nature of the
research often lacks application in real situations.
My recommendations going forward are three fold; 1. continue to
support independent research on the quality of educational strategies,
tools, and practices, 2. develop new methods to gain insight into the
effectiveness of educational strategies, tools, and practices and 3.
expand and create new channels for the dissemination of educational
research.
My first point; the need for continued support for education
research is critical because it is so central to all discussions of
accountability and reform. I often say that schools don't fail,
districts fail. The reason for that belief is that most of the
important decisions relating to how a school operates are made at the
district level; leadership, hours of instruction, calendar, staffing
restraints and yes, selection of instructional tools and practices. The
ability of a district to make sound strategic decisions about their
selection of tools and practices is dependent on quality and timely
information regarding the impact of the tools and practices. That
should not be done district by district. States and the Federal
Government have a responsibility to support independent research on the
educational effectiveness of tools and practices. The research should
be led in large part by practitioners, answering questions that are
timely and relevant to their work with children.
Regarding my second point, in my testimony I have cited two
examples where children benefited by making strategic decisions that
were informed by quality research. I would also share that I have used
other methods of gaining insight into the quality and effectiveness of
educational practice that weren't based on rigorous scientific methods
and proved to be very timely, cost effective and also resulted in
significant benefit for students. I would give you one example. In
Charlotte, one of my staff noted that the correlation between a
student's PSAT scores and AP performance could be built into a program,
and rosters of students that had good potential for success in AP could
be generated. These simple correlation tables provided valuable insight
into the use of the PSAT. The impact of knowing the correlation
information and being able to apply it resulted in significant
increases in college level high school work that was being offered to
students and resulted in a significant increase in overall college
readiness for the students in Charlotte. A second example is from my
work as Commissioner in Florida. As Commissioner, I was able to develop
plans that will expand our statewide data base to include the primary
instructional practices and tools used in each classroom. The intent
was that we could develop relational information between instructional
practices and tools and student achievement in a variety of different
school settings. These findings would be made available to districts
for use in their strategic planning process.
Finally, there needs to be a stronger link between educational
research and real world application. If there is a judgment about
strictly designed research versus real world conditions of application,
the call should favor the real world conditions in every instance.
Information that is disseminated needs to be timely, addressing
challenges the field has today not yesterday. It needs to address
broadly defined challenges, the big questions, not narrowly defined
questions that have little relevance. And dissemination needs to
utilize existing organizations to communicate findings such as The
Council of Great City Schools, CCSSO, Chiefs For Change, AASA and ASCD
to name a few. If the research findings are not of interest to these
organizations, they won't be of interest to their members either and
dissemination will fail, fail because the research is not important.
This committee is addressing an issue of great national importance,
important to our country and also important for our children. I commend
you for your work.
______
Chairman Hunter. Thank you.
I thank the panel, once again, for your testimony.
I would like to start out by saying that it is
interesting--I spent some time in the Marine Corps, so if you
noticed, in the U.S. military there are four different
uniforms, and when you go to combat there are four different
uniforms--two or three, because the Navy wears the Marine Corps
uniform now. But the problem is, if you look at it
scientifically--and you should be able to using different light
spectrums and so forth, and matching up the uniform with the
surroundings and the environment in which you are fighting--
there has got to be one good uniform.
There is obviously, if you test these uniforms using
different spectrums of light and so forth, there is one uniform
that protects the wearer better than any of the other uniforms
do. But if that was true then we would all just have one
uniform. We wouldn't have a Marine uniform, and an Army
uniform, and an Air Force uniform, but that is what we have.
And you would think--it is kind of sad, if we can't do it at
that level what makes us think we can take best practices and
scientific research and datum and use it at this level.
And secondly, there seems to be some disparity between the
ability to get the best practices and things that work and the
best curriculums for teaching teachers that then transfer to
teaching students, and then the implementation--there seems to
be a disconnect. I don't necessarily think we are talking about
that disconnect today or the implementation of research and
your findings, but that has got to be, that is, that gap has to
be bridged at some point, and that is going to be fairly
difficult to do, I think.
First, Dr. Whitehurst, you say it is a mistake for Congress
to dictate how schools--how states and school districts should
use findings from research. Can you provide some examples of
this?
Mr. Whitehurst. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I mentioned Reading
First as an example of the federal government specifying at a
fine level of detail how reading should be taught. There is no
evidence indicating that kids are reading better as a result.
We have in current federal policies and Race to the Top
specifications an indication that there are four ways that a
failing school should be turned around. How do we know that
there aren't nine ways, or seven ways, or six ways?
So to try to get down to the operational level, in terms of
how a teacher should do his job, or how a district
superintendent should do his job, through legislation seems to
me to be a mistake. And if you go through the current version
of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act you will find
almost every section of the bill dictates that practice be
based on research findings.
Often, the research findings aren't there. I remember when
Dr. Smith pulled me aside and said, ``Well, what math
curriculum should I be using?'' And I said, ``I don't know.''
And he said, ``How could you be requiring me to meet the
mandates of No Child Left Behind to use the scientifically-
based research and there is no research to tell me how to do
that?''
So, you know, it is easy to overreach at the federal level.
Again, my point is if the research is done, if it is relevant,
if we have good ways of transmitting, and if educators are held
responsible for the results they will use it. You don't have to
force them to do it.
Chairman Hunter. Answer this, too: How do you make sure,
then, if you have the data, and you have the best practices,
and you have the research that shows what should be taught, how
do you--if you don't want to get down in the weeds on
implementation, because you don't want to because every--there
is no silver bullet for--you could have two schools side by
side on two different blocks and they would require different
implementation. How do you guarantee, then, that the research
is taken to bear in that school, or do you? Do you just let--
kind of let the--if they want to use it then they can use; if
they don't want to use it then they don't have to use it?
Mr. Whitehurst. Well, you certainly raise a very great
challenge. But there is research relevant to that challenge,
and it is research on implementation. So we are developing a
knowledge base about the ways you need to transmit knowledge,
the ways you need to provide professional development around
that knowledge, the way you need to monitor implementation to
make sure that a program is being carried out well.
So I think, you know, on the forefront of education
programs that are being shown to be effective is a very strong
component having to do with implementation. So you are not
asking school personnel, you know, to take something off the
shelf and figure out how to implement it. The implementation is
built into the program--to the program itself.
Chairman Hunter. Thank you very much.
And as my time is expired, I would like to recognize Mr.
Holt for 5 minutes.
Mr. Holt. Thank you.
Actually, we have a very broad topic today, or a collection
of many topics. Of course, we must not forget that what
underlies all this is that research communicated well and made
relevant is our best protection here, and also the teachers'
best protection, against allowing one's deeply held beliefs and
ideologies from blinding them, us, to reality and best
practice.--And we need to make that research practical.
We are talking today about national research. We are
talking about the National Center for Educational Statistics.
We are talking about comprehensive centers. We are talking
about the regional labs that are--I like to think of as akin to
the Agricultural Extension Service that maybe your father the
farmer actually used, because there are best practices that
come from the federal level that a farmer would depart from
only at his own peril.
But we are also talking today about local data. I mentioned
in my opening remarks that I will be reintroducing the Metrics
Act to provide federal assistance to local agencies to apply
data and use it locally. Let me start with Mr. Fleischman and
then Mr. Smith to ask, what do you think is a useful federal
role in supporting local data system development, and can you
give me examples of how that has or how it could be used well?
And then as time allows we will go to other questions and other
witnesses.
Mr. Fleischman. Yes. Thank you for that question.
And first of all, I would say there are a couple of very
good recent reports out of the Data Quality Campaign that I
think are worth looking at. One came out last month and one
just came out this month, and it looks at the connection
between state data systems and how districts use that. I think
they have a number of recommendations in there that are
valuable to keep in mind, because in the end, the state data
systems have to be used at the district level, the school
level, and the classroom level. So the question is how to
better connect all of those pieces of the system.
Going back to this notion of focus on the consumer or the
user of the data, I think it is really important--and the Data
Quality Campaign cite some examples of how states have worked
really well with their end users--to create the support
mechanisms necessary so that data is not used for compliance
purposes but for continuous improvement purposes. I will cite
one specific example at the local level--for me a local level
is both the state and the district--through our Regional
Educational Laboratory work right now. We are using some of the
framework that is provided by a number of practice guides.
These are kind of taking best available evidence and then
helping educators by providing them practical recommendations.
We are working with several of those practice guides,
including one on turnaround and one on data-driven decision
making, with a set of local schools and local school districts
in the Columbia Gorge area of Oregon to help them use in a
rapid increase cycle where they look at their data continuously
for the purpose of improvement. So they take the action, they
look at the data, they focus, and they----
Mr. Holt. To give Mr. Smith some time to answer that----
Mr. Fleischman. Sure.
Mr. Holt [continuing]. Let me turn to him.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. I think, you know, the
driver--why do people in the field want to do anything? Why do
they want to look at data? What data do they need, and so
forth?
And it has been my experience as commissioner and
superintendent that the school leadership and district
leadership is driven by data because of the issues around
accountability and trying to find out if they are being
effective or not, how do they benchmark their work over the
course of the year, if they need to make corrective action. And
so I think there is a--based on the structure we have in our
nation, there is inherent desire on the part of districts and
schools----
Mr. Holt. My specific question is, can we help local
educational agencies use data better, and do you have examples
of that?
Mr. Smith. I think--I don't know if that is--the federal
government needs to be involved with that or that is more of a
state and district issue. I think that in terms of----
Mr. Holt. But it is not happening.
Mr. Smith. I would share that there is a great deal of data
analysis going on in schools every day trying to determine the
effectiveness of instruction that takes place. Connecting that
between what is effective--what do I do when I find that the
work that is going on in the classroom or schools isn't working
isn't effective? What is the solution? Where do I go?
That is where the breakdown is. It is not so much that I
don't know that School X, as a commissioner, is failing and has
failed. What do I do? What solution set do I bring to it and
apply to it?
Mr. Holt. Thank you.
Chairman Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Holt.
I would now like to recognize Mrs. Roby, from the great
state of Alabama.
Mrs. Roby. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I, too, know how
quickly 5 minutes goes by, so we will just jump right in.
Dr. Whitehurst, you talked with the chairman a little bit
about implementation. I just want to expand on the fact that in
your testimony you said that Congress should focus on creating
incentives for practitioners to want to incorporate findings
from the best research into their programs centered around the
performance of schools.
And we hear that word a lot in here--incentives--and rarely
are we given the opportunity to hear specifics as to what those
incentives might be and how the federal government actually
offers those incentives. So could you expand on that a little
bit?
Mr. Whitehurst. Yes, I can. I think there are two
categories of incentives. The one is top-down regulatory
incentives, where, as has been the case in No Child Left
Behind, states have to define targets for performance of
schools. Schools that are not meeting those targets face
various consequences. You have similar sort of mechanisms
structured around positive incentives in Race to the Top.
But somebody at either the state or the federal level is
saying, ``This is what you need to do, and here are the things
that are going to happen if you don't do those things well.''
There is decent evidence that that kind of top-down
accountability has effects, and you will hear practitioners
like Dr. Smith say, ``Well, we are concerned with
accountability. We wanted to do something about the schools
that were failing, as defined by the accountability system.''
The other form of accountability is market-based
accountability. Your school is failing not because you are not
reaching some target set by the state; your school is failing
because parents don't want to send their kids there and they
have other places to send their kids----
Mrs. Roby. And I guess that is the--and sorry for
interrupting----
Mr. Whitehurst. Yes.
Mrs. Roby [continuing]. That is the problem, because not in
every school district do you have that opportunity to make that
choice. And that is the real rub is that if my school is
failing and I don't have a choice to go anywhere but that
school then that incentive doesn't exist.
Mr. Whitehurst. Well, I think that it is possible for the
federal government to do more to incentivize states to
incentivize districts to allow at least public school choice.
Now, if you live in a community in which there is only one
elementary school obviously you are not going to have choice.
But if you live in a community like Washington, D.C., in which
there are hundreds of elementary schools, if you can choose
among them based on good information on how you are performing,
that sends a very strong accountability message.
And again, I think that is a different form of
accountability. It is not fundamentally incompatible with top-
down accountability, but I believe we need more of it. And the
best evidence is that when that accountability is in place the
schools that are subject to the loss of students improve, and
that parents--low-income parents--given good information, will
choose a better school than the school that the district
assigns their child to, and their kids will do better as a
result.
So incorporating that kind of market-based approach in the
accountability system, I think, is a way to go, and we could do
more of that at the federal level.
Mrs. Roby. And certainly we know that part of that
challenge, too, is how to get that information into the hands
of the parent, and that is a whole 'nother topic of
conversation. But thank you for your answer.
Dr. Hoxby, how can IES effectively partner with the private
sector to conduct quality research and make it accessible to
teachers in the classroom?
Ms. Hoxby. Well, I think in many ways the best way to
answer that question is to explain what happens abroad in other
countries, because there is no partnership between the private
sector and the government in most other countries, and as a
result, their education research is very narrow. The government
really has a monopoly on what are the interesting questions and
what are the right ways to answer those questions. And also,
they don't tend to have very much advancement in terms of their
scientific methods for answering those questions.
In the U.S. we do have a pretty effective partnership
already between the government and philanthropic organizations
and universities. And I think if we look at what something like
the Gates Foundation does, it starts interesting, innovative
programs, some of which are never brought to scale; it has
those programs evaluation, sometimes by university researchers,
sometimes by other private sector researchers, like
Mathematica, a contracting organization, and then it makes
decisions about which of these programs to continue and which
of these programs should be discontinued.
I think that is a fantastic role for philanthropic
organizations because it is their money and they want the, if
they want the credit for being innovative they should take the
risks of being innovative.
I think universities play a much bigger role in the United
States, as well. I don't know whether we consider that the
private or the public sector. I suppose it depends on the
university.
But I think the key thing that the universities do is that
they will do basic research, and basic research is important
not because--basic research is research that doesn't apply
immediately to policy, but it usually applies to policy just
one step down the road. So as an example, all of the research
that has come out recently on teachers--the effects that
teachers have on students--some teachers have much more
positive effects, some teachers have much worse effects on
students.
That is all basic research because all it tells us is that
we know that teachers differ a great deal. It doesn't tell us
how we ought to pay teachers, but we need to know that if we
are going to then consider teacher pay policies.
Mrs. Roby. Thank you so much. My time is expired.
Chairman Hunter. Thank you.
Mr. Scott is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to welcome Dr. Smith. You just breezed by, Mr.
Chairman--breezed by the highlight of his career, and that is
superintendent of the Newport News, Virginia public schools.
Dr. Smith, it is good to see you again. When you were
superintendent I think that they had the research--federal
research was under--I forget what it stands for, but it is
OERI. Did you ever use any of that research in Newport News?
Mr. Smith. No.
Mr. Scott. In your other capacities have you used federal
research in your--you asked Dr. Whitehurst for research on
things you needed. Was the research there?
Mr. Smith. No. We have. We got it and we have used it a
lot, and--from a variety of sources, but research from the
federal government, where available and applicable, I would--we
have a--in Florida we have a very well developed reading office
and we constantly stay up with the most current research on
reading, and so forth.
And I would say that, you know, in the field--and again, it
varies a bit from state to district to school; perhaps it goes
back to the question asked earlier about data. A lot of
research can inform the work in general and overall. Day to
day, a lot of schools--most schools I run into--do have good
data, or they have data; they don't have good data, and they
actually are doing research on their own.
Mr. Scott. But that data and research are two different
things. If you have done some research and found out what
works, do you report back to whoever did the research to see if
it worked in your locality? Because I suspect that some very
successful programs would work in one setting and not in
another.
Mr. Smith. We do find that the application of what is
learned can vary from setting to setting. And again, you know,
sometimes information we will gain helps us with that; what
practices work best with students that have limited experiences
when they come to the classroom, or the converse.
Adaptive testing is helping us now, because we have some
work with adaptive testing that allows us to measure up and
measure down, and so we can be more student-centric in our
review and trying to find the right kind of solutions to, you
know, based on the research, on what needs to be done.
Mr. Scott. Thank you.
Dr. Hoxby, you indicated the importance of making sure you
get the best proposals. Does the Institute of Educational
Research wait for proposals or do they put out RFPs of subjects
that need to be studied?
Ms. Hoxby. Both, and I think both are important. By putting
out priorities IES does get researchers engaged in questions
that are important for policy, especially federal policy
makers, and certainly some of the priorities come right out of
federal programs that are funded. I think those are very
important priorities.
But I don't think we want IES to be establishing all of the
priorities simply because sometimes the most important
innovative programs really come out of nowhere, or out of some
educator's idea, out of a particular school, out of a
particular school district that is doing something innovative,
and then often those proposals flow into IES. So I think we
have a pretty good balance at this point of establishing
priorities and attracting researchers to them, but also
allowing researchers to notice what is going on out there in
the field and then bringing that into IES and saying, ``I can
evaluate this.''
Mr. Scott. And with that process do we have information--I
mean, if we want to reduce the achievement gap and the school
board gets together and says, that is our priority; we want
to--is there somewhere you can go to get research on what they
need to do?
Ms. Hoxby. Well, I think that is a tricky question. Ideally
they could go to the What Works Clearinghouse, which is part of
IES, and look up something like, ``How do I close the
achievement gap,'' but it is really not that straightforward.
What the What Works Clearinghouse would tell you is maybe what
reading curriculum works best, or what math curriculum works
best, or it might give you a good sense of whether charter
schools are doing better than public schools in a particular
domain.
So we still have a problem in that the school
superintendent really has to put all of these pieces together,
and I do think that is the gap everyone is identifying.
Mr. Scott. So we have 15,000 superintendents home making
their own process and no central research to help them out. Is
that what we have, Dr. Whitehurst?
Mr. Whitehurst. Not exactly. We certainly have research to
help them out. I agree with Dr. Hoxby that often a practitioner
will come at the problem with different slices than the
research community has, and so there is a challenge in putting
it together and answering the practitioner's immediate problem.
Part of this is simply a lack of knowledge. We have not
been at this game seriously for very long, and one of the
frustrations I had when I was the director of IES is people
would ask me what to do and they would want an answer, and I
could not give them an answer based on the knowledge base that
we had created.
So some of it is a problem of translating what we know more
effectively. Some of it is a problem of our just not knowing
yet the best way to go about doing what needs to be done.
Chairman Hunter. Thank you.
Mrs. Foxx is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to say that this has been a very enlightening
panel. I want to thank all of you for coming today. I have had
a little experience in this area, and am very fascinated by the
subject of research.
Serendipitously, over the weekend I read an article from
National Review Online--and I am sorry Mr. Scott left--it is
called ``Closing the Achievement Gap.'' I don't know the people
who wrote it; Reihan Salam and Tino Sanandaji are their names.
But it is a fascinating article that brings up the issue of
research and how different people can look at the same research
in different ways. And I think that is an underlying issue that
is pretty important.
I want to make a couple of comments and then ask some
questions. As I said, I have been in this field for a long
time, and as you all were talking and as I have read your
statements, I kept coming back to that statement, ``Everything
I need to know I learned in kindergarten.''
Dr. Whitehurst, while you said we are in this field only a
short time, the comment you made about what we have learned
from research, teachers vary dramatically in effectiveness. A
very effective teacher compared to a very ineffective teacher
can create achievement gains for a child in 1 year that can
wipe out a third of the--haven't we always known that? I mean,
did we need to do research to figure out that there are some
good teachers and some not-so-good teachers? I mean, why did we
have to have research to teach us that?
And I guess the question that I would like to ask and
quickly get a quick answer, if I could, from all of you--very
quick answer: Is there research that has not been done that
needs to be done? Just give me two or three words, each one of
you, if you would. What don't we know that we should know?
Dr. Whitehurst?
Mr. Whitehurst. Well, there is a lot we don't know about
effective curriculum, particularly how to deliver it digitally.
We are moving into a digital age, and being able to use that
medium would be extraordinarily important.
Mrs. Foxx. Okay.
Dr. Hoxby?
Ms. Hoxby. I think the most obvious gap is that we don't
know how well teacher incentives work for improving teaching in
the classroom. Most of our studies are now from other
countries, not from this country.
Mrs. Foxx. Mr. Fleischman?
Mr. Fleischman. I think we need more research on data use,
how to use it effectively, and also, across the board,
implementation--how to implement more effectively.
Mrs. Foxx. Mr. Smith?
Mr. Smith. Yes. I would say how to help classrooms to
better adapt to the variability that comes to the teacher every
day--the high flyer, the high performer--and still be able to
adapt to the need of the child that is struggling on a given
topic.
Mrs. Foxx. I have one child. She is an average kid, and I
always felt sorry for every teacher she had because she was
always in a class--we were in a small community--where they had
very, very bright kids and kids with major challenges, and a
whole lot of kids right in the middle. And I felt sorry every
year for those teachers because they had that range to deal
with, and I think you have identified a very important point.
The other thing I would like--Dr. Hoxby, you brought this
up so let me direct the question first to you, and then if
others want to respond I would be happy for you to do that. You
mentioned the Gates Foundation and what they have been doing.
Has the Gates Foundation been more effective in its
implementation of what they have learned than the federal
government has been, or other places like the Gates Foundation?
Ms. Hoxby. I wouldn't say that they have been more
effective. I would say they have looked more at speculative
programs as opposed to established programs. I think that is a
difference between the role of the philanthropic organization
and the government.
I would say they are also faster at shutting down
unsuccessful programs. That is the other thing: When they
figure out that something is unsuccessful it doesn't take them
a couple of years to shut down; it takes them a couple of
months.
Mrs. Foxx. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Hunter. Thank you.
I would like to recognize Mrs. McCarthy for 5 minutes.
Mrs. McCarthy. Thank you. Actually, I am finding this quite
fascinating, and I have got 2 million questions in my head as
we go through all this.
One of the things that I have always been kind of looking
at--you know, we have great people that want to be teachers.
Yet we find when they get into a school to be teachers most of
them are put into lower grades. I am just wondering if the
research has been out there on what our teaching colleges are
doing to make sure that teachers are well prepared to go into
the lower grades. Because what I have found in talking to an
awful lot of young teachers when they first start, they felt
totally unprepared to be teachers. A lot of them have left
within 5 years because they felt that they had the biggest
responsibility to take the youngest and to give them the best,
and yet they felt they were not capable of doing that.
I would just be interested because I think when you talk
about the digital age that is coming in--our younger people
that are graduating, hopefully they are going to be more
focused, because that is the way kids want to learn today. I
think that is one of the problems that we are seeing in our
schools, also.
I guess the other question that I would have would be that
when the data come in and if you have someone that is a
superintendent or a principal that is not interested in data or
doesn't even have time to look at data, is the state prepared
to be able to get that information down when they see those
schools are failing? I will throw that open to everybody.
Oh, and before I forget, I have an article from the RAND
Education on some research that I would like to submit to the
committee, because I am a supporter of charter schools. I also
believe it is not the silver bullet that everybody is looking
for. With that, Mr. Chairman----
[The policy brief, ``Increasing Participation in No Child
Left Behind School Choice,'' may be accessed at the following
Internet address:]
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9424/index1.html
______
Chairman Hunter. Without objection.
Mrs. McCarthy. Thank you.
Mr. Whitehurst. I will go first, since I am on the right
here. There are good survey data indicating that teachers in
general have the reactions that you have just described. They
feel badly underprepared for the jobs that they have to do. It
does result in a lot of loss from the profession.
Innovations around that are several. Some districts are
setting up their own teacher preparation programs so that the
practical experience is directly related to what the district
wants to provide. We have programs like Teach for America that
are providing alternative pathways in teaching that bypass the
traditional school of education preparation routes.
But clearly, we need to do a better job in preparing
teachers for the jobs that they have to do, that we are, for
the first time, to Mrs. Foxx's issue, actually able to measure
teacher effectiveness rather than just having the intuition
that there are good and bad teachers. It allows us to tie the
performance of classroom teachers to their preparation
institutions, so for the first time the colleges of education
can be held responsible for the quality of instruction that the
teachers provide. So I will handle that question, and I will
let my colleagues take on that or other ones, if they wish.
Ms. Hoxby. Let me just follow up on that, and I won't
repeat what Dr. Whitehurst said. But we do know that if you
look now at data it does not appear to be the case that
teachers who are educated in different channels are
systematically better or worse than one another. Teachers who
are educated through alternative teacher channels often look
about the same, in terms of their performance, as teachers who
go all the way through a traditional ed school and it takes
them 6 years to get their degree.
And that is somewhat disturbing because it means that
whatever it is that we are doing in the training, it does not
systematically work. I think these days we have to look
backwards, the other way. Because we can identify teachers who
are effective, we can look at the schools that are producing
effective--the education schools that are producing effective
teachers systematically.
Another thing that we have learned is that effective
teachers are good at spreading effective teaching around them.
If you drop one effective teacher into an elementary school it
turns out that the teachers who interact with her will also
become more effective.
So we are getting a better understanding of how teachers
can learn, but it appears, to a large extent, that they learn
from one another and that they learn from classroom practice,
not so much just from getting a credential.
Mr. Fleischman. I think we still have a ways to go in terms
of what was just said, in terms of having teacher preparation
institutions and other vehicles to prepare teachers to be ready
to do the job. In part, having been a teacher, there is a lot
of on-the-job training, and mentoring, and support you need
once you get there, but there is no question that there could
be better preparation.
In fact, I mentioned before the Data Quality Campaign
report, just out this month, and they looked at 10 state
actions to support effective data use. Only one of them was
implementing policies to ensure educators know how to use data
appropriately once they have that in place. So there is a lot
of work that needs to be done in the system to get to the issue
that you just raised.
Mr. Smith. I would just add that, very quickly, one, on
teacher quality issues, a lot of states aren't out pursuing the
link between student achievement and the institution that
prepared the teacher to enter the profession. There is some
work done by some organizations to gather more national
information on teacher preparation and they are having an
extraordinarily difficult time getting state institutions to
give that data up, so having to actually go to a Freedom of
Information Request to get that information, so it is a very
slow process, but very important one.
On the data side, there--you know, data management
systems--again, a lot of schools have data; it is not the data
that they need to focus their attention on the things that are
important, and an area that I think we need to continue to do
research on is what are the most effective data management
systems out there and the most informative for school
administrators and superintendents to use to, you know, to help
drive improvement.
Mrs. McCarthy. Thank you.
My time is up.
Chairman Hunter. Thank you.
Mr. Hanna is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Hanna. I would like to use the balance of my time and
give it to Mrs. Foxx. Thank you, Chairman.
Mrs. Foxx. I want to thank the gentleman from New York for
yielding me his time.
I could not let this panel get away without mentioning
something that is a particular bone of contention with me, and
so far three of you have sort of violated my norm on this. You
used the term ``training'' in association with human beings. It
is a shame to admit this, but I remember one thing from my
doctoral program, and one of my professors said, ``You train
animals and you educate people,'' and that has really stuck
with me.
And so especially when I am in education settings I try to
point that out to people because I want you to think about the
fact that we are educating people. Dr. Whitehurst, it is in
your material that you put out.
And, Dr. Hoxby, you and Mr. Fleischman both just said it.
So I would like you to think about whether you want to use
that term in conjunction with human beings, because I think
that has something to do with our mindset in education. I
really believe language is important, and I am sure you all
would probably agree with that.
There are a couple of things that came up. Dr. Whitehurst,
in a time--we always have limited resources, and I know, as you
say, in research this has been an area where we have used a
very small amount of resources, and in some ways have come to
it very lately, so I agree with you on that aspect of it.
I would like to start with you again, particularly. Again,
I asked this question a slightly different way; where could we
best use our dollars? And something none of you have mentioned,
which I would like you to think about as you answer that
question, we are always focused on the teacher, and obviously
that is important. The teacher is the person interacting most
with the student.
But I have felt in all my life of being involved in
education is we never look enough at the structure of
education. I believe that most of what we do in education is
designed for the adults and not the children.
For example, we have known for a long time that adolescents
do a very poor job early in the morning, and yet, high schools
begin at 8 a.m. We have ignored that research for the
convenience of the adults.
So would you make any recommendations in terms of research
on structure of education, and would you make some comments
about that; and again, very quickly so each person has a chance
to make some comments about that?
Mr. Whitehurst. Well, if you mean by structure the
arrangement of the school day and the circumstances in which
instruction is delivered, yes, I think we need policymakers and
practitioners to pay attention first to the research that we
already have. We know, for example, that investments in pre-K
programs pay a large dividend, and yet they are typically
underfunded.
We have very strong research demonstrating that high school
kids' learning is negatively affected by starting them before
they are awake in the morning. We have a variety of research
that rates the organization of the school day.
And so, you know, I am in favor of--certainly we ought to
use what we know when we can do that.
Ms. Hoxby. I think that you are making a very important
point. I often say to people that the problem in some areas of
education is not that we don't know the answer but simply that
the stakeholders will not listen to the answer or will not use
the answer.
An example of that, for instance, is the longer school year
and the longer school day. These are just not popular with
stakeholders, but it--the evidence suggests that they are very
good for students. So that is a perfect example of where the
structure gets in the way of improvement.
Mrs. Foxx. Mr. Fleischman?
Mr. Fleischman. Yes. Mrs. Foxx, first of all, thank you for
that reminder about training. It was made to me by my
colleagues last week. I didn't remember. Thank you.
The one place, I think, where we need to do a lot more
research--it is also on structure--is the connection between
secondary school and college-going--college readiness, college
attendance, college success. That is one of those places where
there are two different structures coming together and we need
to better understand how the secondary school can do a better
job and how the institutions of higher education can do a
better job to ensure the students' success.
Mr. Smith. I would just agree with you that a longstanding
belief of mine that schools don't fail; districts fail--that
when you find--that districts are the ones responsible for
setting the policies that drive much of what goes on in
schools. And to fix schools school-by-school is extraordinarily
challenging because the envelope that it operates within is
usually broken also.
Mrs. Foxx. Again, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you very
much for your tolerance, and I want to thank the panel.
You have been a----
Chairman Hunter. I thank the gentlelady.
I would now like to recognize my neighbor in San Diego,
Mrs. Davis, for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to all of you for being here. You have all had a
great deal of experience in this area, and I am wondering what
you see has been the best way that research has been
disseminated to teachers.
I think, Dr. Hoxby, you mentioned that we do know--and I
have heard Bill Gates say--that putting new teachers or
teachers who, perhaps, aren't doing as well in front of
teachers who are doing very well and seeing how they engage
with students, and how they get so much from students is
beneficial. We don't see that enough.
It seems to me we fail to do that. We fail to provide the
resources so that we can have those really great teachers in
front of new and unsuccessful teachers.
Is that one way that we could do that? Have you seen that?
How do we do that?
Because going to a practicum 1 day is not going to do it.
We know that. How do you think it works?
Ms. Hoxby. Well, let me first say that one of the things we
know because of IES is that a lot of the professional
development programs that are highly regarded in the United
States don't appear to have the effects that we--that they are
intended to have. So simply putting teachers into a
professional development program does not necessarily have big
effects.
I think that we--one thing that we lack in the United
States that other countries have, and particularly England has,
is a system of school inspectors, and these inspectors it
sounds like someone is just coming down to inspect your school
like inspect your house, but that is not really what they do.
They come into your classroom, they observe you for several
days. They are experts; they have all of the data on what is
happening in your classroom and the achievement of your
students; they have the diagnostic data.
And they sit down with the teacher at the end of the
inspection and try to relay best practices to the person. And
they have an intense experience that we simply do not have
paralleled in the United States where a principal would often
spend as little as maybe an hour in a teacher's classroom each
year.
Mrs. Davis. Right. Yes.
Mr. Smith. I would just share a couple thoughts. One is
that you have to get the information out to where people go,
where they attend, whether it be through national conferences,
or whatever, but there has to be a strong push to disseminate
good quality research through the normal channels.
The second, what I have learned from my experience in
Florida's commissioner is that there is, I think, a great deal
of dissemination that could be done--I don't think it is being
done yet in--at least consistently across the nation--by
working with a combination of state departments of education
and legislative committee staff in state government, where
there is a keen interest in taking research findings, be it
school day, or connecting teacher quality with teacher
preparation, and trying to drive that into state policy and
state statute.
Mrs. Davis. So where--is that a federal role? Should there
be some way--we are all familiar with the military and defense
research, and others in environmental and energy areas.
Mr. Smith. I think the dissemination--and again, I think--
you know, the dissemination is, you know, if, I would say that
if some sources of information, be it regional labs or
whatever, my friend here, but if they had to depend on checks
coming in for how much service was provided they might go broke
within a month. And so I think that, again, there needs to be
that consumer-driven process. This research is critically
important to us.
Mrs. Davis. Mr. Fleischman?
Mr. Fleischman. What I would add is not to forget the human
factor. Just in the same way that we are having a dialogue
right now and we are learning about something, I think that a
lot of the learning that takes place takes place in context
with people doing their jobs and then having better data and
better research to inform that.
A good example of that through the Regional Educational
Laboratory system are the so-called bridge events, where we
take things like the practice guides, which are based on the
best available research, and give practical recommendations,
and then work with folks out in the field. We just recently
held one on rural school turnaround where we were looking at
the recommendations of rural school turnaround, looking at the
school improvement grant models, working with rural school
educators and state departments of education, and working
through the process of learning how to apply that in real time
for real problems.
Mrs. Davis. If I might, but really--oh, looks like my time
is up. I can't do that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Hunter. I thank the gentlelady.
Mr. Barletta is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Barletta. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Whitehurst, current law requires that education
programs be supported by scientifically-based research. Based
on your past experiences in the field of education policy and
your current work at the Brookings Institution, how do you
define scientifically-based research?
Mr. Whitehurst. Research in education that draws on the
methods that are the canon for the social and behavioral
sciences is scientifically-based research. People are trained
to do it. People who are trained to do it recognize it when
they see it and recognize it when it is not happening.
It is a moving game in that the methods improve and our
ability to focus those methods on questions that are important
changes over time. And I think there is, you know, a
congressional role in mandating that federally funded research
meets high standards for its scientific base. And it is also
ultimately the role of the science community, the research
community, to define specifically what that means, because
again, it will change and advance over time.
Mr. Barletta. And upon the reauthorization of ESEA, how do
you think this definition needs to be revised?
Mr. Whitehurst. The current definition, I think, is a
pretty good one. I think you have a choice either to leave it
out and leave the definition up to the research community or to
take what is there and fine-tune it where necessary.
I think it would be a mistake to take the current
definition and water it down because that is a signal that we
will be moving back to where we were 15 years ago, where what
passed for education research was frequently a subject of
derision in any department and any university except the
education school.
Mr. Barletta. Dr. Hoxby, same question: How do you define
scientifically-based research, and do you think the definition
needs to be redefined?
Ms. Hoxby. I really define scientifically-based research in
the way I would define it in medicine, or physics, or anything
else. It is the use of the scientific method.
And one of the ways that we know we are doing scientific
research is that we should be able to come to conclusions that
are based on the data and the logic as opposed to based on our
presuppositions. Sometimes you should realize that the data
overturns your presuppositions. That is the scientific method.
I don't think that we need to take science out of ESRA
reauthorization. I completely agree with Dr. Whitehurst that
the situation we were in 15 years ago is so much worse than the
situation we are in right now that we need to keep that
scientific standard in the legislation.
At the same time, it is almost impossible to define what
scientific method is because it is a moving target, and that is
a good thing, right? We wouldn't want it to be true in medicine
that the science of today was the same as the science of 10
years ago.
And similarly in education, one of the great points of
using the scientific method and requiring that it is used is
that the methods actually improve because we realize we can't
answer this sort of question so we need to have a new method to
answer that sort of question, or this question has been
answered very imperfectly so we need to develop a new method.
We want to actually keep the development of methods so that 20
years from today we are not just in a different place in terms
of what we know on education but we are in a different place in
terms of what we can know because we have better methods.
Mr. Barletta. And, Dr. Smith, as a past classroom teacher
and school principal, how do you define scientifically-based
research?
Mr. Smith. You know, I have worked with this a lot and I
don't know--I don't think that the definition needs to be
changed a lot. Because, again, I came out of the world when we
didn't really have any research. Whatever felt good and seemed
right and the adults were comfortable with seemed to be okay.
And so I think we have made huge strides forward. I think
the question is what drives the application of the definition,
and is it being driven by--strictly by researchers that don't
understand the connection and application in the real world or
is it--is working within that definition in a way that gives
you real-world, timely answers?
And I think, as in medicine, you can deal with an epidemic
in a lot of ways--you can define it very narrowly, very
rigorously, with controls, and by the time the epidemic has
already taken its toll. Or you can find other ways of working
on very scientific, highly respected results that give you more
practical--mirroring the conditions that exist at the moment in
a timely fashion.
So I think how that gets gauged and who helps guide the
structure of the research I think is the key.
Mr. Barletta. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Hunter. I thank the gentleman.
I think that is all the questions we have.
I would like to thank the witnesses and finish by just
saying this: I am optimistic because--not necessarily because I
think we are all smart people and we can all handle this, but
because technology, and especially adaptive learning
technology, you know, it is going to be working and it is going
to be implemented at some point, I would say, over the next
decade or two, and--I mean, if they already have adaptive video
games, things that work that way where the smartest kids get to
learn as the smartest kids do and excel and the average kids
get to have the education curriculum matched to them, and so
forth for every learning possibility.
So I am optimistic, one, and I do think that sunshine and
data can create accountability. I think just the fact that if
it is easy to consume and it is easy for all the players to be
able to read it, and understand it, and see who is winning and
who is not, and where they should send their kids to school and
where the educators want to go to work at, I think that is a
big motivator for everybody at every level for all the
different stakeholders.
So thank you, again, to our witnesses.
And there being no further business, this subcommittee
stands adjourned.
[Additional submissions of Mr. Holt follow:]
Prepared Statement of the Learning and Education
Academic Research Network
As the panel considers reauthorization of the Education Sciences
Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA), the Learning and Education Academic Research
Network (LEARN Coalition) is pleased to submit this statement in
support of this process and, in particular, to highlight the role of
research-intensive colleges of education in fulfilling the potential of
this landmark legislation.
The LEARN Coalition was formed nearly seven years ago to advocate
for quality education research at the federal level. Our institutions
are dedicated to the most rigorous standards for designing and
executing the critical research needed to inform better teaching,
stronger schools, and, most importantly, higher performing students.
The Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the
National Institutes of Health are our primary agency partners in this
endeavor. As a result of the investments that have been made in
education research, new tools have been developed to inform teacher
practice and impact student performance. Investments in research across
the education spectrum are required to translate what we have learned
through basic research on the brain, cognition, and learning into
effective teacher preparation and practice, standards for learning,
assessment, and inform curriculum development. Investments in
educational research and rigorous evaluation systems lead to better
educational programs, schools, effective teaching, and higher student
achievement. It is a direct investment in our nation's economic
competitiveness.
Since LEARN's launch, we have witnessed significant expansion in
the federal resources invested in education research. Moreover, there
has been an ongoing and collaborative effort between institutions of
higher education and government leaders to ensure that taxpayer
resources are used to address the most important challenges for our
schools and students. ESRA, and the Department of Education's Institute
for Education Sciences (IES), are critical building blocks in an
increasingly robust education research system. In particular, IES
facilitates the kind of research that enables the translation of theory
into practice using systematic study of phenomena from small scale to
large. LEARN member institutions contribute to the mission of IES by
conducting research and setting the knowledge base in a variety of
different areas including: Teacher Performance Systems; Assessment
Standards; Educational Interventions for Special Education Students;
STEM Education; and English Language Learners.
As the Committee moves forward with ESRA reauthorization, we
encourage careful consideration of how IES and its programs can fully
utilize peer-reviewed, high quality research capabilities, such as
those found in the nation's higher education community, to drive
student achievement. The benefits of this approach include:
1. Innovation--higher education faculty are at the center of
critical, creative thinking about the learning and teaching processes,
including with interdisciplinary teams that combine insights across
biologic, environmental, and social factors;
2. Evaluation--universities frequently work with state and local
education agencies, as well as other stakeholders, to conduct field-
based research and evaluation that promotes timely understanding of
what works; and
3. Dissemination--through a variety of education, publication, and
engagement tactics, higher education participants are a critical link
for translating new knowledge into practice, on both a focused and
larger scale.
The LEARN members are prepared to provide the Committee with a
comprehensive perspective on how research-intensive higher education
institutions contribute to better student outcomes. The ESRA
reauthorization process clearly is an opportunity to accelerate and
expand the nation's efforts here through sound evidence development and
use. Our institutions are committed to being at the forefront of
producing these student performance solutions and to working with
federal policymakers to improve student outcomes.
learn member institutions
Indiana University, W.W. Wright School of Education
Iowa State University, College of Human Sciences
New York University, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human
Development
Purdue University, College of Education
Rutgers University, Graduate School of Education
State University of New York at Buffalo, Graduate School of Education
Syracuse University, School of Education
Texas A&M University, College of Education and Human Development
The Ohio State University, College of Education and Human Ecology
University of California--Irvine, Department of Education
University of California--Santa Barbara, Gevirtz Graduate School of
Education
University of Florida, College of Education
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, College of Education
University of Iowa, College of Education
University of Maryland College Park, College of Education
University of Minnesota Twin Cities, College of Education and Human
Development
University of Pittsburgh, School of Education
University of Southern California, Rossier School of Education
University of Virginia, Curry School of Education
University of Washington, College of Education
Vanderbilt University, Peabody College of Education and Human
Development
______
[The report, ``From Compliance to Service: Evolving the
State Role to Support District Data Efforts to Improve Student
Achievement,'' may be accessed at the following Internet
address:]
http://dataqualitycampaign.org/files/
From%20Compliance%20to%20Service.pdf
______
[Questions submitted for the record and their responses
follow:]
U.S. Congress,
Washington, DC, December 5, 2011.
Dr. Caroline Hoxby,
Department of Economics, Stanford University, 579 Serra Mall, Stanford,
CA 94305.
Dear Dr. Hoxby: Thank you for testifying before the Subcommittee on
Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education at the hearing
entitled, ``Education Research: Identifying Effective Programs to
Support Students and Teachers'' on Wednesday, November 16, 2011. I
appreciate your participation.
Enclosed are additional questions submitted by members of the
Committee after the hearing. Please provide written responses no later
than December 19, 2011 for inclusion in the final hearing record.
Responses should be sent to Dan Shorts of the Committee staff who can
be contacted at (202) 225-6558.
Thank you again for your important contribution to the work of the
Committee.
Sincerely,
Duncan D. Hunter, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary
Education.
representative duncan hunter (r-ca)
1. Given that the focus of this hearing is to examine the most
effective ways of utilizing student research to help teachers better
understand students' instructional needs, it would be helpful to hear
your thoughts on computer adaptive assessments. These assessments
adjust automatically to each student's ability level, generating more
difficult questions if the student is answering correctly and easier
ones if the student is answering incorrectly. In doing so, these
assessments enable teachers to pinpoint the proficiency level of each
student across a range of subjects that correspond with the standards
set by a state's curriculum.
There are a few states who have already implemented computer
adaptive assessments as a tool of measuring student achievement and
growth--including Oregon--and a number of others who are interested in
following suit, given that computer adaptive assessments provide
essential and timely data that can more accurately illustrate student
placement, student growth, and instructional needs.
Can you provide the Committee with your views on computer adaptive
assessments and whether they can be of benefit to teachers,
administrators, parents, and ultimately students?
2. How does education research play a role in providing reliable
information to parents? How can the federal government aid states and
school districts in improving these efforts?
3. With such high standards for scientific evaluation, how can the
federal government ensure that the research methodology is not overly
cumbersome, leading to artificial results that are not relevant in a
dynamic and fast-changing classroom?
representative virginia foxx (r-nc)
4. During the hearing you mentioned that other countries
(specifically in Europe and Latin America) have better administrative
data sets than the United States, and you could therefore do better
research in other countries. I think a specific example you cited was
the Dutch school reform and choice movement. Why do other countries
have better data sets? Is there something in the US prohibiting them
from collecting the same data sets (i.e. student privacy concerns)?
Please expand more on why other countries do a better job with
administrative data sets.
______
Dr. Hoxby's Response to Questions Submitted for the Record
chairman hunter
1. Given that the focus of this hearing is to examine the most
effective ways of utilizing student research to help teachers better
understand students' instructional needs, it would be helpful to hear
your thoughts on computer adaptive assessments. These assessments
adjust automatically to each student's ability level, generating more
difficult questions if the student is answering correctly and easier
ones if the student is answering incorrectly.
In doing so, these assessments enable teachers to pinpoint the
proficiency level of each student across a range of subjects that
correspond with the standards set by a state's curriculum.
There are a few states who have already implemented computer
adaptive assessments as a tool of measuring student achievement and
growth--including Oregon--and a number of others who are interested in
following suit, given that computer adaptive assessments provide
essential and timely data that can more accurately illustrate student
placement, student growth, and instructional needs.
Can you provide the Committee with your views on computer adaptive
assessments and whether they can be of benefit to teachers,
administrators, parents, and ultimately students?
Computer adaptive assessments are evaluation tools that are
extremely helpful because they promote good decision-making at all
levels: the classroom level, the school level, the district level, the
state level, and the federal level. They prevent most cheating and
crude ``teaching to the test.'' Because adaptive assessments put
neither floors nor ceilings on the achievement of students, they allow
students who are behind or ahead of their grade to be evaluated well.
Every student can be appropriately challenged, and no student ever need
face a ``dumbed down'' test. Computer adaptive assessments also allow
tests from different states to be equated fairly easily so that states'
performance can be compared well.
Let me expand just slightly on some of these points.
When taking a computer adaptive assessment, a student's answers to
the initial questions affect whether he or she offered more or less
challenging questions from then on. This is the way in which the
assessment adapts to the student's level of knowledge and skill.
Because students spend their time answering questions that efficiently
diagnose what they know and do not know, a computer adaptive assessment
delivers a very accurate evaluate of a student's learning. In contrast,
a student who is taking a pencil-and-paper test may find that most of
the questions are very hard or very easy for him or her. For such
students, even the best pencil-and-paper test delivers only a crude or
imprecise evaluation. The results of computer adaptive assessments are
available immediately, not months after the test is taken. This allows
teachers to use the test results to modify their teaching immediately,
in order to provide extra instruction in the areas in which the student
was weak. Also computer adaptive assessments provide not only an
overall score, which can be used for little else but overall
evaluation. They provide diagnostic information on exactly what
knowledge and and skills the student lacks. For instance, a teacher
might learn that a student can add, subtract, and multiply fractions
but does not know how to divide one fraction into another. Many
assessments give teachers lesson plan suggestions as well as results.
Thus, the teacher might receive suggested lessons, examples, and
practice problems for helping students learn how to divide fractions.
In short, computer adaptive assessments have at least five
properties that make them very useful to policy makers at all levels:
(i) they can be much more accurate than a pencil-and-paper test that
occupies the same time, (ii) their results are available immediately;
(iii) their results are useful for diagnosis, not merely for rewarding
someone who does well overall or punishing someone who does poorly
overall; (iv) they generate lesson plans to improve a student's
learning, quickly.
Computer adaptive assessments prevent outright cheating as well as
``teaching to the test.'' It is easy to make a computer adaptive
assessment far more secure than pencil-and-paper tests are at present.
The main way in which people cheat on pencil-and-paper test is
inputting or changing answers during the period before the legal
testing time or in the period after the legal testing time. This method
of cheating requires no sophistication or cleverness, which is probably
why it is the only common method. While such behavior is easily curbed
by having proctors deliver the tests, remain during testing, and remove
the tests, states have so far refused to use proctors, citing cost
concerns. (Whether such cost concerns are legitimate is not at all
clear, but the point remains that pencil-and-paper tests are not
proctored and therefore not secure.) In contrast, computer adaptive
assessments can easily be designed to be electronically available only
during the legal testing period. While a very sophisticated hacker
might possibly hack into a computerized assessment and enable people to
cheat, we have little or evidence that school staff are willing to try
complex or difficult methods of cheating.
Because computer adaptive assessments draw upon a very large bank
of questions and no two students can be expected to take exactly the
same test, these assessments strongly deter ``teaching to the test'' in
its crude form where teachers literally train students to answer
particular questions. Of course, computer adaptive assessments do not
and should not prevent teachers from helping their students excel by
having the learn the knowledge and skills likely to be tested by the
assessment.
2. How does education research play a role in providing reliable
information to parents? How can the federal government aid states and
school districts in improving these efforts?
Education research can be a much more reliable source of
information to parents than are schools themselves. This is mainly
because researchers do not feel a strong need to defend existing
policies or support proposed policies. They can afford to be objective.
In addition, researchers often bring modern scientific methods to bear,
and these methods are sometimes less familiar to school and district
staff. However, in order to help parents, it is essential that research
(i) be held to a high scientific standard, (ii) be as timely as
possible, (iii) be made available to parents in an easily interpretable
form. The federal government can be helpful on all these dimensions. By
setting high scientific standards for its grantees and contractors, the
Institute for Education Sciences can strongly encourage the use of the
most scientific methods. By encouraging schools, districts, and states
to build databases that take fairly standard forms, the federal
government can ensure that research is timely. This is because delays
in getting data are the main cause of slow research. Most schools,
districts, and states will build accurate, fairly standardized
databases given sufficiently strong incentives: they are collecting the
information anyway. Finally, the federal government can encourage
federally funded researchers to publish a version of their research
that is intended for parents and other non-researchers. Non-profit
organizations often play this ``translation'' role as well, and it is
very important.
3. With such high standards for scientific evaluation, how can the
federal government ensure that the research methodology is not overly
cumbersome, leading to artificial results that are not relevant in a
dynamic and fast-changing classroom?
High research standards really have no effect on how quickly we
produce research. It takes no longer to evaluate a rigorously conducted
randomized controlled trial that it takes to evaluate the same policy
in a less scientific manner. In fact, many researchers would say that
evaluating a randomized controlled trial is faster because it is
easier. There are three things that do slow education research down,
and the federal government can improve two of the three. The first
thing that makes education research rather slow is simply that students
change slowly. Even the best curriculum in the world does not
immediately raise students' learning. Depending on the intervention, we
may have to follow students for a year or several years, and there is
nothing that we can do about the pace at which students change. The
second thing that slows down education research is data collection.
While evaluation itself is quite fast, data collection is slow.
Researchers still obtain data through painfully slow processes, in
which it is quite normal for researchers to spend months if not years
soliciting (even begging) for data, making their way through layers of
administrators, and getting approved in long-drawn-out processes. This
process need not be slow at all. If schools, districts, and states keep
their data in a standardized form, in central repositories, researchers
would not be forced to go through this process. Researchers with strong
track records could be given a blanket approval so that their data
requests were fast-tracked. The third thing that slows down education
is the reluctance of many educators to provide data or allow randomized
trials on the policies in which they believe most strongly. Their
reluctance is based on the fear that the research will not validate
their strong prior beliefs. Although this problem is not wholly
solvable, any intervention that receives federal funding could be
required to provide data to researchers. This would not only help to
ensure that federally funded projects get evaluated well and quickly,
it would also create a ``culture'' of evaluation that is still absent
in education.
representative virginia foxx (r-nc)
4. During the hearing you mentioned that other countries
(specifically in Europe and Latin America) have better administrative
data sets than the United States, and you could therefore do better
research in other countries. I think a specific example you cited was
the Dutch school reform and choice movement. Why do other countries
have better data sets?
Is there something in the US prohibiting them from collecting the
same data sets (i.e. student privacy concerns)? Please expand more on
why other countries do a better job with administrative data sets.
Most European countries and several Central and South American
countries have much better administrative data sets than the United
States. This is largely because these countries have more centralized
systems of education, and the central education ministry requires
schools and districts to upload their data in a standardized format. In
the U.S., in contrast, each district has enormous control over its own
data and reports only a tiny share to its state government: the data
elements required under its state's accountability program and under No
Child Left Behind. While American data bases are improving as states
develop longitudinal databases, many states have dragged their feet or
succumbed to political pressure so that they are still far from having
good data bases, let alone the comprehensive data bases of the
aforementioned countries. The resistance to data bases comes from
interest groups who are afraid that information will expose their lack
of contribution to student learning.
The evidence suggests that the independence of U.S. school
districts is a good thing for their productivity and their management.
If they were centrally managed and did not have to compete at all with
one another, American school districts would likely produce
substantially less learning than they do now. However, it does not
promote efficiency to give each district the right to keep its data in
its own way, measure things according to its own lights, and create its
own idiosyncratic data access procedures. Such lack of standardization
greatly inhibits competition and productivity because it makes
comparing schools and evaluating policies very difficult. We have an
analogous situation for firms. Although having firms that are
independently managed improves competition and productivity, giving
each firm the right to report data in a completely idiosyncratic way
would not make the market better. It is important for investors that
measures of income, for instance, are fairly standardized across firms.
Since schools actually engage in a far less diverse range of activities
than firms, there is no reason--except for fear of exposure--why they
should resist standardized reporting much more than firms do.
______
U.S. Congress,
Washington, DC, December 5, 2011.
Dr. Eric Smith,
20 Eastern Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21403.
Dear Dr. Smith: Thank you for testifying before the Subcommittee on
Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education at the hearing
entitled, ``Education Research: Identifying Effective Programs to
Support Students and Teachers'' on Wednesday, November 16, 2011. I
appreciate your participation.
Enclosed are additional questions submitted by members of the
Committee after the hearing. Please provide written responses no later
than December 19, 2011 for inclusion in the final hearing record.
Responses should be sent to Dan Shorts of the Committee staff who can
be contacted at (202) 225-6558.
Thank you again for your important contribution to the work of the
Committee.
Sincerely,
Duncan D. Hunter, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary
Education.
representative duncan hunter (r-ca)
1. Given that the focus of this hearing is to examine the most
effective ways of utilizing student research to help teachers better
understand students' instructional needs, it would be helpful to hear
your thoughts on computer adaptive assessments. These assessments
adjust automatically to each student's ability level, generating more
difficult questions if the student is answering correctly and easier
ones if the student is answering incorrectly. In doing so, these
assessments enable teachers to pinpoint the proficiency level of each
student across a range of subjects that correspond with the standards
set by a state's curriculum.
There are a few states who have already implemented computer
adaptive assessments as a tool of measuring student achievement and
growth--including Oregon--and a number of others who are interested in
following suit, given that computer adaptive assessments provide
essential and timely data that can more accurately illustrate student
placement, student growth, and instructional needs.
Can you provide the Committee with your views on computer adaptive
assessments and whether they can be of benefit to teachers,
administrators, parents, and ultimately students?
2. In your testimony, you talk about the fact that strict
application of scientific research is often difficult for classroom
teachers because of the dynamic nature of the classroom. Can you
provide some examples of other types of research that are beneficial to
districts and schools?
______
Dr. Smith's Response to Questions Submitted for the Record
1. Computer adaptive assessments (CAA) have great potential and we
should encourage the thoughtful expansion of its use. CAA can provide
the opportunity to help teachers more accurately tailor instruction to
individual students' needs for both remediation and acceleration. If
designed correctly, an adaptive test can also be somewhat diagnostic;
helping the teacher or a computer program to identify a student's skill
deficiencies. Adaptive tests are best used as formative assessments
that help in guiding instruction and support. The data from adaptive
assessments should lead to a flexing of the instruction provided a
student so that student will be able to pass summative standards based
exam by the end of the year.
2. I believe there is a need to research practices that are proving
successful in the ``real world'' over time. For example, as a
superintendent in Charlotte I learned a great deal by sharing
strategies and performance data with other superintendents that had
similar student populations. I learned from them what strategies were
making a difference in learning outcomes and what strategies were not
successful. Another example was in Florida where I served as
Commissioner. During that time we prepared to build a data base that
would correlate school performance data and teaching strategies. Again,
our intent was to learn what conditions led to success and what
conditions led to failure. This is not to discount more rigorous
scientific research but I believe we can have a fuller picture by
expanding our research strategies in the ``real world''.
______
U.S. Congress,
Washington, DC, December 5, 2011.
Dr. Grover J. ``Russ'' Whitehurst,
775 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036-2013.
Dear Dr. Whitehurst: Thank you for testifying before the
Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education at
the hearing entitled, ``Education Research: Identifying Effective
Programs to Support Students and Teachers'' on Wednesday, November 16,
2011. I appreciate your participation.
Enclosed are additional questions submitted by members of the
Committee after the hearing. Please provide written responses no later
than December 19, 2011 for inclusion in the final hearing record.
Responses should be sent to Dan Shorts of the Committee staff who can
be contacted at (202) 225-6558.
Thank you again for your important contribution to the work of the
Committee.
Sincerely,
Duncan D. Hunter, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary
Education.
representative duncan hunter (r-ca)
1. Given that the focus of this hearing is to examine the most
effective ways of utilizing student research to help teachers better
understand students' instructional needs, it would be helpful to hear
your thoughts on computer adaptive assessments. These assessments
adjust automatically to each student's ability level, generating more
difficult questions if the student is answering correctly and easier
ones if the student is answering incorrectly. In doing so, these
assessments enable teachers to pinpoint the proficiency level of each
student across a range of subjects that correspond with the standards
set by a state's curriculum.
There are a few states who have already implemented computer
adaptive assessments as a tool of measuring student achievement and
growth--including Oregon--and a number of others who are interested in
following suit, given that computer adaptive assessments provide
essential and timely data that can more accurately illustrate student
placement, student growth, and instructional needs.
Can you provide the Committee with your views on computer adaptive
assessments and whether they can be of benefit to teachers,
administrators, parents, and ultimately students?
2. How can the purpose and operation of the national research and
development centers, the RELs, and comprehensive centers be improved
upon? Are these entities actually serving regional and local needs and
assisting states, school districts, schools, and teachers to improve
student achievement?
3. The Institution of Education Sciences is responsible for
evaluating federal programs for their impact on improving student
achievement. However, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the
Department's Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy, the Government
Accountability Office (GAO), and private entities also evaluate federal
programs for their effectiveness. Is the current system working? Are
each of these agencies using the same metrics in evaluating programs?
Which agency is in the best position to evaluate federal programs?
______
Dr. Whitehurst's Response to Questions Submitted for the Record
chairman hunter
Computer adaptive assessment has already been incorporated into
psychometrically advanced assessment programs, including those carried
out by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education
Statistics. For example, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies,
which follow a large sample of children through school, carry out all
of their student achievement assessments using adaptive technologies.
Adaptive testing shortens test times, allows children to get more
questions that probe their understanding (rather than a lot of
questions that are too easy or too hard), and requires the development
of assessment scales that are more likely than traditional assessments
to be aligned from grade to grade. The timeline for feedback to
educators from computer adaptive testing is orders of magnitude shorter
than the timeline for obtaining results from paper and pencil tests.
Finally, the costs of computer adaptive testing when spread over a few
years to amortize start-up investments in technology are lower than the
costs of traditional testing. The federal government, in my view,
should not stand in the way of the use of computer adaptive testing as
it has done through the Department's interpretations of NCLB assessment
requirements. And to the extent that discretionary funds are available,
Congress should consider providing money to states to advance the use
of this technology.
As I indicated in my testimony, the RELs are not working well in
that much of the work they produce is of little relevance to the needs
of those responsible for schools in their regions. This has been the
case for 40 years. My recommendation is that in lieu of authorizing
RELs Congress should provide a voucher to state departments of
education that could be used specifically to purchase data analytic
services that use statewide longitudinal databases to address questions
of immediate importance to decisions about education policy at the
state level or among numerous school districts within the state. These
analytic services could be obtained from any of a number of entities,
including the existing RELs, that pass muster with the Institute of
Education Sciences in terms of the quality of their research services.
IES should retain a review function with respect to the analyses that
are commissioned with the research vouchers to make sure than the
conclusions reached are justified by the methods deployed.
The national research and development centers serve an important
function in providing for concentrated team-based research on education
topics of national interest. However, it is a mistake, in my view, for
Congress to dictate the topics on which the R&D centers should focus
through authorization language per the current version of ESRA or the
amounts that should be carved out for R&D centers vs. regular
competitive grants per appropriations language. The director and
professional staff of the Institute of Education Sciences with the
advice and consent of the National Board for Education Sciences is in
the best position to know when there is both need and capacity in the
field for an R&D center on a particular topic. In its efforts to comply
with Congressional intent, IES frequently has held competitions for R&D
centers on particular topics that generated only a few applications and
none of quality. This would not have happened if the hands of IES had
not been tied on R&D centers through authorizing or appropriation
language.
Comprehensive centers are not part of ESRA and are not administered
by IES, although frequently the contractor for a regional comprehensive
center is the same as the contractor for the regional REL. The
comprehensive centers are part of a patchwork of technical assistance
providers that various offices of the Department contract with though a
variety of program accounts. In my view the technical assistance
entities that are funded through ED, including the comp centers,
provide services of uncertain quality that are rarely driven by
customer demand. Similar to my recommendation with regard to the RELs,
I suggest that Congress consider shifting to a mechanism in which some
portion of program funds that are appropriated pursuant to ESEA, IDEA,
Perkins, and other big budget programs is reserved for use by state
departments of education to purchase technical assistance for
implementation of the federal education programs. The Department could
be authorized to create a list of contractors who have demonstrated the
capability of carrying out technical assistance on particular topics.
There are two important distinctions that are relevant to answering
this question. The first is between evaluations of impact vs.
implementation. Impact evaluations address the question of whether a
program has a causal effect on the outcomes it is intended to
influence. For example, an impact evaluation of Reading First would ask
whether the reading achievement of participants in the program is
accelerated compared to similar students who are not participants. An
implementation evaluation, in contrast, would ask whether the funds for
the program were expended as dictated by legislation and regulation.
For example, were Reading First funds deployed to provide professional
development for teachers as required in NCLB?
The second distinction is between primary evaluations that are
carried out by through the collection and analysis of original data,
e.g., assessments of students carried out by the evaluation contractor
vs. secondary evaluations that are based on summarizing and providing
recommendations and conclusions based on a synthesis of results from
previously published studies and other data sources.
OMB and GAO do not carry out impact evaluations and rarely engage
in primary evaluations. Rather they summarize what is known from
primary data collections and from simple investigatory techniques such
as engaging in interrogatories of program participants or program
implementers.
The Department's Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy
Development (OPEPD) has limited itself in recent years to
implementation evaluations that are based on primary data collection
and quick turn-around secondary evaluations that are of high relevance
to the Secretary. OPEPD does not presently carry out impact
evaluations, although it used to and nothing in statute prevents it
from doing so.
Private entities sometimes carry out impact evaluations of federal
programs but these are typically conducted years after the program has
been implemented and are based on available administrative data, e.g.,
existing school records, rather than primary data collection that is
designed ahead of time to answer a range of planned questions. Thus the
type of impact evaluation of a federal program that might be carried
out, for example, by a university-based economist would only very
rarely have the timeliness or the depth and breadth to answer questions
that are important to Congress and the administration in decisions
about program authorization and funding.
Presently, only the Institute of Education Sciences carries out
large scale impact evaluations of federal programs. None of the other
entities listed in the question overlaps with IES in this function.
This is a critical function that is being carried out well by IES.
Presently, only IES and OPEPD carry out large scale primary
implementation evaluations. OPEPD has generally carried out its
implementation studies well, but that are significant inefficiencies in
having two separate divisions of the Department involved in evaluating
a single program. For example, program implementers may be required to
answer a similar set of questions and respond to duplicative data
requests from IES and OPEPD. Some of these problems of overlap cannot
be solved by better coordination between IES and OPEPD because the
activities are funded by different contracts that are awarded on
different timetables to different contractors. Further, there is always
a legitimate concern about whether an office, OPEPD, that develops
policy for and with the Secretary and that has no independence from the
Secretary should be charged with evaluating whether programs the
Secretary is charged with implementing are being carried out as
intended in statute. For these reasons, it is my recommendation that
IES be given the sole authority by Congress to carry out impact and
implementation evaluations that are either required or permitted in
program legislation. This has been the historical drift both within
legislation and in the division of responsibilities between IES and
OPEPD as administratively determined by the Department. It would be
wise to cement this division of labor legislatively, in my view. In
doing so Congress should designate funds specifically for evaluation
purposes rather than setting aside a percentage of funds in program
authorizations to be used for ``national activities, including
evaluation.'' The latter language is problematic in that it creates a
competition between IES and the Department's program offices for funds
from the same pot, and it empowers the Secretary to throttle funds for
evaluation activities that might expose performance issues with
programs with which the administration is identified politically. In my
view, all education programs with an annual price tag above a threshold
of $20 million should be subject to an implementation and impact
evaluation before they are reauthorized. These evaluations should be
carried out by IES with funds specifically targeted to that purpose by
Congress.
______
[Whereupon, at 11:27 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]