"the thing I think I’ve learned about the WWC over time is that we haven’t worked hard enough to understand how people make decisions in schools."
It is frustrating that the WWC took decades and billions of dollars to figure out who in our education system had the power to decide on curriculum. All they had to do was ask a handful of parents or teachers. This is a stunning example of ivory tower academia! Sadly, so many researchers don't respect the parents who have an inside view of what is working for their children. It was parents who were begging for phonics-based reading instruction....for decades. They were sharing copies of "Why Johnny Can't Read" when it came out in 1955, only to be disdained by the establishment.
This interview had, I think, the opposite of its intended effect upon me. I've been frustrated by the lack of certain recent education data, and I would be delighted if I could blame DOGE for it. But... forming an FDA-like agency to regulate curriculum? That's a horrifying thought. And that agency run by people who don't know who makes curricular decisions in schools? I feel like we really dodged a bullet here.
(Not the author — my colleague was, but) Something that frames my thinking here, though, is how much of the education academy is actually fighting against the idea of empirical or quantitative evidence itself. And so to the extent IES wasn't able to shift the rather incorrigible ed academy... that's not a huge knock against it, to me. Getting the education field to take this kind of research seriously has arguably been an issue for over a century now, depending on how you frame that debate.
"the thing I think I’ve learned about the WWC over time is that we haven’t worked hard enough to understand how people make decisions in schools."
It is frustrating that the WWC took decades and billions of dollars to figure out who in our education system had the power to decide on curriculum. All they had to do was ask a handful of parents or teachers. This is a stunning example of ivory tower academia! Sadly, so many researchers don't respect the parents who have an inside view of what is working for their children. It was parents who were begging for phonics-based reading instruction....for decades. They were sharing copies of "Why Johnny Can't Read" when it came out in 1955, only to be disdained by the establishment.
This interview had, I think, the opposite of its intended effect upon me. I've been frustrated by the lack of certain recent education data, and I would be delighted if I could blame DOGE for it. But... forming an FDA-like agency to regulate curriculum? That's a horrifying thought. And that agency run by people who don't know who makes curricular decisions in schools? I feel like we really dodged a bullet here.
(Not the author — my colleague was, but) Something that frames my thinking here, though, is how much of the education academy is actually fighting against the idea of empirical or quantitative evidence itself. And so to the extent IES wasn't able to shift the rather incorrigible ed academy... that's not a huge knock against it, to me. Getting the education field to take this kind of research seriously has arguably been an issue for over a century now, depending on how you frame that debate.