August 2008 — News
Print this article | Email this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
Education Decisions: Where's the Evidence and Research Base?
|
|
[Editor's note: This article is the first installation in a two-part series on using research to make decisions on education technology purchases. Part 2 can be found here. --D.N.]
Remember the old Monty Hall program Let's Make a Deal? In that game show, you could win the prize behind one of three doors. If you started by choosing door 1, should you have changed your mind and selected door 2, if Monty showed you what's behind door 3 (Tierney, 2008)? What has this to do with research? Well ... people are convinced what they know is the right thing and forge ahead with decisions based on their rationalizations, no matter what research indicates.
In education, such decisions--especially technology purchasing decisions--can have profound consequences.
So concurred Ben Weintraub, CEO and president of Merit Software, who said he has concerns regarding education decision making and how research is used in K-12 schools. He said he believes there is a lot of faulty research, some of which schools use to make their policy decisions. Educators tend to take a little bit of information and turn it into what they want it to be (personal communications, April, 2008).
According to Weintraub, basing education decisions on misinterpretations of research results has led to policy changes, which have not necessarily led to increases in student achievement. He pointed to increased spending, charter schools, voucher programs, single-sex schools and classes, class size--is small really better? for which students?--supplemental education services mandated by No Child Left Behind, decisions aimed at increasing accountability, and false claims based on extensions of research beyond the initial scope as examples of where interpretations of results of research have been a concern.
More importantly, as a software developer, he said he's concerned about schools that implement technology interventions based on research showing very small effect sizes. He finds problems with basing decisions on studies with small sample sizes, control groups that are ignored, data that are not student focused, evaluations that are short term, and causes of improvement that are in reality undetermined. Many decisions do not consider cost and practicality and are not well thought out.
