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Moving Toward the 'Gold Standard' in ResearchJanuary 21, 2003 On January 6, members of AEP seeking help charting the new territory of scientifically based research met in Washington, DC, with officials of the U.S. Education Department. As is widely known, the No Child Left Behind act requires materials and approaches funded with federal dollars to be supported by SBR. But for publishers questions remained: Does the requirement apply to supplemental materials? Could they build gradually toward the "gold standard"--randomized trials, with large numbers tracked over several years, proving a "causal claim" for their products? How would they afford such a plan? While USED officials reiterated that the SBR requirement indeed would apply to any materials purchased with federal dollars--including supplementals--their approach was direct and helpful, attendees reported. Susan Collins of Apex Learning, who helped moderate the meeting, describes it as "a very effective start to an ongoing conversation between AEP and the USED." Co-moderator Keith Garton credits USED attendees with providing clearer direction, which, he added, would be put into effect immediately at TIME For Kids. Most important, federal officials did offer practical guidance. "The onus, they said, is really on the states to write proposals showing how they will effectively integrate various curriculum pieces--including those that can show SBR individually--to achieve educational objectives," says AEP's Charlene Gaynor. An important implication, she adds, is that it simplifies publishers' strategies. "Practically speaking, what we're hearing is: You need to have good communication with the people who are writing the proposals; you don’t need to send someone into every individual school." Many comments inherently acknowledged that making education into a more scientific enterprise is a large, systemic change that will naturally begin with a period of flux. Asked if we should expect a "Math First," comparable to Reading First, Russ Whitehurst of the Institute of Education Sciences, which oversees the What Works Clearinghouse, estimated it would be 5 to 10 years before an appropriate body of scientifically based research would exist to support such an initiative. Still, some bottom-line principles emerged: First judge what level of evidence is appropriate to your subject area, and gauge the scope of your educational claims--concentrating on those you can substantiate. Then, Gaynor advises, think of your research as a marketing strategy: "Instead of thinking: How far do I have to go? Think: What is going to give me the competitive advantage in this environment?" She recalls that one USED commentator actually said for areas that are not defined, concentrate on showing test score improvement. "And Russ Whitehurst added, the larger the scope of the product, the higher the research standard you should expect to be held to." Some AEP members anticipated setting up a timeline that would take years of work to reach the gold standard in research. At the meeting one asked, if a company currently could afford, say, only a one-year study, should it go ahead? Yes, answered Reid Lyon of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (Lyon, long outspoken on reading research, has offered to review publishers' research designs. The What Works Clearinghouse also expects to provide a list of research advisers, in future.) As for funding, the best suggestion was that publishers align themselves with school districts--especially large, urban ones--that also will need to show improved achievement resulting from their approaches. But, Gaynor adds, federal sources stressed that companies also should develop their own research expertise. "They said straight out, companies should begin to develop internal research capacities, similar to the pharmaceutical companies'," she recalls. "Publishers really need to have someone on their team, for instance, who really understands the literature on instructional design." Showing alignment with good instructional design principles is a strong form of secondary evidence for academic areas in which no pool of SBR currently exists, she said. "We know what the best principles are; if you develop your product along those lines, you're halfway there." | ||||
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© 2008 The Association of Educational Publishers | ||||
