Why So Much Education Research Fails
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why so much education research falls apart under scrutiny and why that should worry every principal.
Key Takeaways
- Education has a replication problem - Studies in education often can't be replicated because data is unavailable or the original findings don't hold up.
- Bad research drives real policy - Weak evidence has shaped major decisions, including math policies that affected students' access to Algebra 1.
- Too much research is low-value - Many studies focus on small, paper-worthy topics instead of important questions about effective teaching and curriculum.
- Effectiveness research matters most - Schools need stronger research on what actually works in instruction, curriculum, and student learning.
- High-stakes decisions need high standards - If research is going to influence policy for kids, it should be well funded, transparent, and held to rigorous standards.
Full Transcript
Why is so much education research so bad? Kelsey Piper over at The Argument has a new piece in which she explores the replication crisis in the social sciences and how, in education, it's even worse. Scientists have attempted to replicate studies in different fields, and in many social sciences, you can replicate, like, half to three quarters of the results, but in education, They were not able to replicate any studies. Either the data was not available, or when it was, and they crunched the numbers again, the findings did not replicate. And this matters because we use education research to make policy for kids. This matters because when we take research like Joe Bowler's and examine it and find that it's lacking and then look at the impact that it's had, we realize that bad conclusions have actually affected kids.
Joe Bowler's research was used to eliminate Algebra 1 from middle schools in San Francisco for years and years, the California mathematics framework was shaped by ideas that supposedly came from research, and yet that research was terrible. It does not hold up to even minimal scrutiny. So I think we've got to really address this problem of research quality in education, and part of that begins with studying important things. I think so much educational research energy is devoted to things that are basically, like, write-a-paper level projects, right? Like, the kind of things that you do as a class assignment that maybe reflect your interests, maybe reflect, you know, things you're interested in thinking about, but don't actually answer important questions about how to teach effectively. I think we have to do more effectiveness research and actually figure out how should we be teaching, what curriculum
is most effective. You know, what are the approaches that actually get results? And we should hold that research, we should fund it, we should make sure that it's done, and then we should hold it to very high standards, especially if we're going to make high-stakes decisions that affect kids' education based on that research. Let me know what you think.