10/17/06
Questioning education, ìresearchî
by Joe Nathan
Not impressive to down-right disturbing. Thatís how I would describe the quality of ìresearchî presented a conference I attended last week in Nashville, Tennessee. Normally I wouldnÇt bother you with details of research. But so many Ñstudiesâ are being presented these days in the news media, that I think it is important to say a bit about the subject.
At the conference university professors were, among other things, trying to compare different kinds of schools, and determine which were more effective. Some of the schools that were being compared here in Minnesota had student populations of 60% or more, low-income students. They were being compared with other schools that served less than 10% low-income students.
It doesnít have an advanced degree to see that this generally is NOT a fair comparison. It makes much more sense to compare schools serving a similar group of students -- and try to learn lessons from those that are doing a really good job.
A second thing that disturbed me was an attempt to explain why certain people chose particular schools. Complex formulas were employed to do this, based on familiesÇ race. But for reasons that were not clear, researchers ignored something pretty obvious. If you want to understand, at least in part, why families are selecting a school, wouldnÇt it be a good idea to ask them? I posed that question to the people responsible for this research, but they had no response.
Then there was the study examining how much money was being spent on particular kinds of schools. Once again, the researchers seem to miss a number of pretty obvious details, coming up with a very questionable conclusion.
Unfortunately, the federal government -- that is to say à-- us -- has given a LOT of money to the people who organized this conference, and are doing some of the research presented at it. I intend to follow up with the federal officials . IÇll ask, among other things, whether anyone is evaluating the evaluators, and what standards are being used to do this.
Almost every day a letter or email arrives sharing a study that someone somewhere has done about children or schools. Some of it seems carefully done. Other studies appear to have a clear bias, and were designed in ways that appear designed to reach certain conclusions.
Sometimes I quote research. I try to review any study carefully before using it. But based on what I saw last week, I plan to say more about any research I share with you.
Of course during political campaign seasons, voters regulary are presented with polls and studies designed to help convince us of something.
I think that research can be very useful. But I think researchers, and the news media, owe the general public a clear explanation of how conclusions were reached. We canít all read every study. But we should expect people who report on it to look carefully and cautiously at any poll or study.
Joe Nathan, a former public school teacher and administrator, directs the Center for School Change, Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota jnathan@hhh.umn.edu
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