Statement of Robert E. Slavin, Director Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education

Johns Hopkins University
200 W. Towsontown Blvd.
Baltimore, MD 21204

Committee on Appropriations
Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Activities

Hearings on Implementation of No Child Left Behind

March 14, 2007

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak with you today about the need for accelerated development and evaluation of programs critical to

No Child Left Behind.

First, I should introduce myself. I direct the Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education (CDDRE) at Johns Hopkins University, funded by IES to develop and evaluate district-wide strategies for helping schools meet their state standards. I am also Chairman of the Success for All Foundation, a non-profit organization that develops and evaluates programs for high-poverty schools, from pre-K to high school. Our flagship Success for All program is used in about 1200 elementary and middle schools in 47 states. Success for All has been successfully evaluated in more than 50 experiments, thirty of which were done by third parties. Most recently, a national randomized evaluation led by Geoffrey Borman at the University of Wisconsin once again found positive effects of Success for All on elementary reading achievement.

Research, Development, and NCLB

My message to you today is straightforward. When No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is reauthorized, it should include funding to enable America's best developers and researchers to rapidly develop and rigorously evaluate new programs specifically designed for use in the aspects of NCLB that offer assistance to schools in meeting their Adequate Yearly Progress goals, such as Reading First, Supplemental Educational Services, and turnaround programs for schools in corrective action.

Aren't schools already implementing proven programs in each of these areas? Despite more than 100 mentions of "scientifically based research" in NCLB, research-proven programs are rarely being implemented in any aspect of NCLB. One reason for this is that there are too few programs with strong evidence of effectiveness. If you applied a stringent criterion for evidence of effectiveness today, it is widely recognized that only two programs would qualify: Our Success for All program and another program called Direct Instruction. Even these programs were not used at any significant scale in Reading First, as turnaround models, or in SES, but one reason for this is that no one wanted to base policies on only two programs.

In essence, then, I'm here to ask you to provide substantial funding to create competitors for Success for All.

Why am I arguing for more competitors? My commitment, and that of my colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and the Success for All Foundation, is to evidence-based reform in education. We believe that education will not truly advance in this country until educators implement programs and practices with strong evidence of effectiveness, which means that they have been compared to randomly assigned or matched control groups on valid measures of achievement. Only when evidence of effectiveness, not salesmanship, becomes the basis for educators' decisions about the programs they use with students will education begin the cycle of constant improvement through research and development that has made American medicine, agriculture, and technology the best.
The rationale for evidence-based reform is simple. Use what works. Who could be against that? Yet in education, we continue to use what is popular or what is well-marketed, not what works. This must change.
No Child Left Behind already contains provisions and rhetoric that favor evidence-based reform. Its accountability provisions create motivation to use effective programs, and its focus on programs to assist schools in meeting standards, such as Reading First, SES, and turnaround programs for struggling schools, all create mechanisms for increasing the use of research-proven programs, especially in schools not meeting their state standards. Yet in practice, research-proven programs have played very little role in NCLB. To change this, two things are needed: Revisions in the legislation to more clearly focus educators on proven programs, and creation and evaluation of many more programs. It is the second of these that is my focus today.

Aren't the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) and other agencies already developing and evaluating programs that could be used in NCLB? IES has in fact funded a variety of research and development projects on many topics and grade levels, and this research is identifying some programs and practices that could add to the set of research-proven programs for NCLB. But IES is underfunded, and spread too thin across all subjects and grade levels to produce rapid change targeted to the programs urgently needed in Reading First, SES, and turnaround programs. A few months ago I saw a New York Times article bemoaning cuts in NSF funding of $400 million. An NSF spokesman was trying to dispel the idea that $400 million is "decimal dust." Yet this "decimal dust" is 2

Thursday

March 15th, 2007

Robert

E. Slavin

Education News

Statement of Robert E. Slavin, Director Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education

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