Classroom tools and technology are changing rapidly, and traditional research cannot keep up without significant support to identify and implement best practices into the classroom.
That was the consensus of state education leaders, equity advocates and education technology experts attending a packed symposium on the future of education research and development at the Capitol on Thursday.
“We know instinctively that what works to teach an eighth-grader in Houston who is behind grade level in reading isn't necessarily the same as teaching a first-grader in rural New Mexico how to read. And what worked when we were in high school may not be effective for kids who are in high school today,” says Sarah Shapiro, a senior fellow and director of social innovation at the Federation of American Scientists, who heads the Coalition for Learning Innovation, a coalition of groups that aims to improve education research. “But without a strong research and development system, we won't know what works, for whom, and under what conditions.”
The coalition is calling on Congress to update education research R&D priorities and allocate $1.95 billion for R&D at the National Science Foundation's Office of STEM Education and $900 million for R&D at the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. This will require a policy shift by Congress, increasing the Department of Education's R&D budget from $390 million to $349 million in FY2022-2023.
“effective [education] “Interventions, programs and services have always been accessible and available to affluent communities, but they haven't always been available to those who haven't had the same opportunities or the same resources,” said Augustus Mays, vice president of partnerships and engagement at the Education Trust, a nonprofit focused on educational equity. “To me, evidence-based policymaking has always been what makes the difference.”
Mays pointed to a move to focus federal pandemic relief funds on tutoring programs whose designs have proven effective, such as using tailored curricula with individual or very small group sessions at least three times a week. This model differs from the tutoring provided under No Child Left Behind's supplemental education services, which have repeatedly been found to have no benefit to student achievement, in part because the programs varied widely from district to district.
Richard Clutter, CEO of the International Association for Technology in Education, said educational technology is changing classroom practice so rapidly that educators can't rely on traditional research grant cycles.
“Five years [randomized controlled trial] Apps and [artificial intelligence] “It's changing so rapidly that a whole new set of capabilities is coming out every two weeks,” Clutter said. “We have to think of new approaches to doing that research.”
Educational research needs to move faster and be more useful to teachers, experts say
There is a growing movement in Congress to establish a fifth center within IES, named the National Center for Higher Development Education, dedicated to “rapid response, high-impact research.”
In 2011, the Obama administration tried to create an R&D center that would be an educational equivalent of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon's cutting-edge research program credited with developing the Internet, stealth technology, and the Global Positioning System. The effort failed, but it helped create the Investing in Innovation (i3) grants. i3 has been praised for helping to expand promising programs, but it has also been criticized for its long evaluation periods and limited success; only 12 of the 67 completed i3 evaluations found any benefits to student outcomes.
“We need research agendas that encourage more thoughtful conversations, not just about what gets funded,” Clutter said. He said the future of education research “will be co-created with educators, and the end goal will not be to publish in peer-reviewed journals. [an] “Demonstration of influence and impact.”
Research policymakers have called on Congress and state governments to do more to help teachers stay up to date with the best evidence about learning. “We have a lot to learn from the research community about how to make learning better and more effective. If you go into a school and you're still talking about 'left brain, right brain' or 'learning styles,' none of that is having the impact it needs to have,” Clutter said, referring to two common but long-dismissed ideas about student learning.
Maryland Superintendent Cary Wright, who previously led Mississippi's public schools and spearheaded the state's “Science of Reading” initiative, agreed. He said it's easy to find research-backed reading practices, but much harder to get all educators to understand them.
“I told my team, ‘We’re not going to assume that everyone knows how to do it. [science-based reading practices]”We gave it the 'we' rating because we had done enough balanced literacy instruction,” Wright said. “We were going to stick to what we knew worked in the research, so we ended up retraining every teacher in the state.”
