January 2004 — Exclusive Series: SBR
Print this article | Email this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
Determining 'What Works' - An Interview With Dr. Grover 'Russ' Whitehurst
T.H.E.: You said that your expectation is that 'grantees would choose from the list.' But the WWC says very clearly on its Web site it d'esn't have an approved list.
WHITEHURST: Well, 'list' is not the right word. You will at some point be able to go into the Clearinghouse Web site and click on something like 'Everyday Math' or the Houghton Mifflin basal reading series, and you'll be able to find whether there is any strong evidence to support positive effects of the use of that program. In some sense, one could construct a list by identifying all the Ps that have any evidence of effectiveness associated with them. But you will not find that list generated by the What Works Clearinghouse.
What the Clearinghouse is doing is providing information, and the information can be used either voluntarily by school districts or education decision-makers to increase the likelihood that they will make the right decision about [an instructional program]. It may also be used by other components of the U.S. Department of Education in regulating what people have to do to get funds. But that's a decision that certainly will be made down the road by [the Office of] Elementary and Secondary Education, or the Office of Innovation and Improvement, or whichever office is doing this work. They will make their own decisions about how to use the evidence from the What Works Clearinghouse, just as states and localities will.
T.H.E.: Do you think that school districts are going to be in a position where they are going to have to either turn to the WWC database or do their own research on any product or program that they use?
WHITEHURST: No. I think that should that day come, it is centuries from now. I think that the level of evidence, the requirements in terms of the amount of evidence that's necessary, will be directly proportional to the potential impact of the decision. So, when you're making a decision on the reading curriculum of every kid in New York City, that's a decision that you'd want to be embedded in as much evidence as possible, where you set a relatively high bar for the evidence of effectiveness that will be required.
The only situation, I think, in which evidence is going to be required for that sort of decision [i.e., smaller, supplemental product purchases] is if the marketplace drives decisions in that direction. One could imagine that a vendor of a reading supplement might go out and do a well-designed study demonstrating that, in fact, reading comprehension g'es up when this supplement is used, and that would give that vendor some marketing advantage in going to a school district.
T.H.E.: In fact, that is one of the concerns among vendors about SBR: That even when funding is not connected to the WWC evidence reports, the market will start favoring the larger publishers who can afford to do those studies.
WHITEHURST: I'm not sure. Two things: First, it will not be the U.S. Department of Education that drives decisions at that level. That will be, again, the marketplace and decision-making at the local level. And I don't actually find anything objectionable about that at all. If I'm the local principal and I've got to make a decision about whether to go with this reading supplement versus that reading supplement, if there's one that's got some evidence that when deployed in a real-life situation it actually improves comprehension scores, why wouldn't I want to have that information.
