In the 1930’s, scientists in France announced that based on principles of aerodynamics, bees could not fly. The only evidence to the contrary was observational, atheoretical, quasi-scientific reports that bees do in fact fly.
The widely known story about bees’ ability to fly came up in a discussion about the dissemination of proven programs in education. Many education researchers and policy makers maintain that the research-development-evaluation-dissemination sequence relied upon for decades to create better ways to educate children has failed. Many observers note that few practitioners seek out research when they consider selection of programs intended to improve student learning or other important outcomes. Research Practice Partnerships, in which researchers work in partnership with local educators to solve problems of importance to the educators, is largely based on the idea that educators are unlikely to use programs or practices unless they personally were involved in creating them. Opponents of evidence-based education policies invariably complain that because schools are so diverse, they are unlikely to adopt programs developed and researched elsewhere, and this is why few research-based programs are widely disseminated.
Dissemination of proven programs is in fact difficult, and there is little evidence of how proven programs might be best disseminated. Recognizing these and many other problems, however, it is important to note one small fact in all this doom and gloom: Proven programs are disseminated. Among the 113 reading and mathematics programs that have met the stringent standards of Evidence for ESSA (www.evidenceforessa.org), most have been disseminated to dozens, hundreds, or thousands of schools. In fact, we do not accept programs that are not in active dissemination (because it is not terribly useful for educators, our target audience, to find out that a proven program is no longer available, or never was). Some (generally newer) programs may only operate in a few schools, but they intend to grow. But most programs, supported by non-profit or commercial organizations, are widely disseminated.
Examples of elementary reading programs with strong, moderate, or promising evidence of effectiveness (by ESSA standards) and wide dissemination include Reading Recovery, Success for All, Sound Partners, Lindamood, Targeted Reading Intervention, QuickReads, SMART, Reading Plus, Spell Read, Acuity, Corrective Reading, Reading Rescue, SuperKids, and REACH. For middle/high, effective and disseminated reading programs include SIM, Read180, Reading Apprenticeship, Comprehension Circuit Training, BARR, ITSS, Passport Reading Journeys, Expository Reading and Writing Course, Talent Development, Collaborative Strategic Reading, Every Classroom Every Day, and Word Generation.
In elementary math, effective and disseminated programs include Math in Focus, Math Expressions, Acuity, FocusMath, Math Recovery, Time to Know, Jump Math, ST Math, and Saxon Math. Middle/high school programs include ASSISTments, Every Classroom Every Day, eMINTS, Carnegie Learning, Core-Plus, and Larson Pre-Algebra.
These are programs that I know have strong, moderate, or promising evidence and are widely disseminated. There may be others I do not know about.
I hope this list convinces any doubters that proven programs can be disseminated. In light of this list, how can it be that so many educators, researchers, and policy makers think that proven educational programs cannot be disseminated?
One answer may be that dissemination of educational programs and practices almost never happens the way many educational researchers wish it did. Researchers put enormous energy into doing research and publishing their results in top journals. Then they are disappointed to find out that publishing in a research journal usually has no impact whatever on practice. They then often try to make their findings more accessible by writing them in plain English in more practitioner-oriented journals. Still, this usually has little or no impact on dissemination.
But writing in journals is rarely how serious dissemination happens. The way it does happen is that the developer or an expert partner (such as a publisher or software company) takes the research ideas and makes them into a program, one that solves a problem that is important to educators, is attractive, professional, and complete, and is not too expensive. Effective programs almost always provide extensive professional development, materials, and software. Programs that provide excellent, appealing, effective professional development, materials, and software become likely candidates for dissemination. I’d guess that virtually every one of the programs I listed earlier took a great idea and made it into an appealing program.
A depressing part of this process is that programs that have no evidence of effectiveness, or even have evidence of ineffectiveness, follow the same dissemination process as do proven programs. Until the 2015 ESSA evidence standards appeared, evidence had a very limited role in the whole development-dissemination process. So far, ESSA has pointed more of a spotlight on evidence of effectiveness, but it is still the case that having strong evidence of effectiveness does not provide a program with a decisive advantage over programs lacking positive evidence. Regardless of their actual evidence bases, most programs today make claims that their programs are “evidence-based” or at least “evidence-informed,” so users can easily be fooled.
However, this situation is changing. First, the government itself is identifying programs with evidence of effectiveness, and may publicize them. Government initiatives such as Investing in Innovation (i3; now called EIR) actually provide funding to proven programs to enable them to begin to scale up their programs. The What Works Clearinghouse (https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/), Evidence for ESSA (www.evidenceforessa.org), and other sources provide easy access to information on proven programs. In other words, government is starting to intervene to nudge the longstanding dissemination process toward programs proven to work.
Back to the bees, the 1930 conclusion that bees should not be able to fly was overturned in 2005, when American researchers observed what bees actually do when they fly, and discovered that bees do not flap their wings like birds. Instead, they push air forward and back with their wings, creating a low pressure zone above them. This pressure keeps them in the air.
In the same way, educational researchers might stop theorizing about how disseminating proven programs is impossible, but instead, observe several programs that have actually done it. Then we can design government policies to further assist proven programs to build the capital and the organizational capacity to effectively disseminate, and to provide incentives and assistance to help schools in need of proven programs to learn about and adopt them.
Perhaps we could call this Plan Bee.
This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.
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