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Statement of Robert E. Slavin, Director Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education
- Categorized in: Commentaries and Reports
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
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
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I recently wrote a critical review of Slavin's latest book about Success for All, that was published by the Teacher College Record. Here I note the number of weaknesses of Success for All that several reading teaching experts have pointed out. My review is available online.
Patrick Groff, Professor of Education Emeritus, San Diego State University.
NCLB as a legislation should have modeled using scientifically-based research in the development of the legislation. We have far too many "entrepreneurs" interested in capital flow than in learning as long as some government agency funds the development of the product they sell. Immediate flow of earnings rather than long range! SES suppliers represent part of the problem with NCLB, they have no accountability to the local communities.
As an individual realizing that there are two continents called North America and South America, I am always curious about our arrogance in the use of the word "America" to represent the United States.
1. Slavin and his foundation have no reading program actually beyond first grade. He has hired people to write questions that fit a limited template that piggy back on other reading program books.
2. He and his wife Nancy created the wonderful?? "Roots" books in a few months time.
3. A school spends a ton of money for SFA but receives poorly written booklets done on a desktop publishing machine that teachers have to spend hours xeroxing in order to have any materials for the children to use.
4. Professional development from SFA is very limited, and mostly consists of Foundation personnel singling out teachers for criticism who are not giving the children all As and Bs.
5. In an SFA school teachers have no rights to information concerning students, no decision making rights about placement, and no right to say question anything about the program.
6. Slavin holds big dog and pony shows a couple times a year in desirable locations like Orlando, Seattle or N.Y.C. School districts are strongly advised to send several personnel to these each year. School districts are charged $600 for each participant plus $150 a night for their room and then of course the districts have to cough up the airfare as well. No information ever comes back to the staff.
6. The coolest thing SFA does is trick school districts into paying the most important SFA staff members themselves. Each school is told they have to have an SFA facilitator who is really the local Nazi enforcement officer if you will. We have two. So each district pays one or two of their previous teacher staff members salary and benefits plus the salary and benefits to pay the new teachers that need to be brought on board to replace them.
6. Now all this would not be so bad (Well , yes it would) if Slavin had a program that was truly the final word on teaching
reading. His program runs like a workout at the gym for 90 minutes: Check the parent signed homework slips, practice the vocabulary words in teams, teacher reminds students of week's skill, (say cause and effect) reads a few pages aloud in the current story, assigns the students to read two or three pages in turn with theri partner, then one or two silently, then to discuss the Team Talk questions with their partners, write the answers to two of them, and then play "Numbered Heads" to go over the answers to the questions and earn points for their "team". Slavin says that the children are grouped according to ability. But alack and alass this is not the case. The children are grouped across grades by book level meaning that you have older children who have a lot reading problems placed with younger children who are quicker readers. Is anytime during the reading class spent on attending to the needs of the slower older children? No. The teacher's job is to follow the wording of the provided Teacher's Guide.
All in all it is actually appalling to me that this program which is the antithisis of all the values that our country was founded on has gotten any government support or money let alone the endorsements and millions of dollars that it has. I think it is a testament to the fact that are many people in our government who are willing to go along with and endorse something because it sounds good rather than making the effort to really check something out.
Notice how often Slavin talks about RESEARCH and how little time he spends showing his reading materials and program components.
Final note: When SFA moves into a school, an iron curtain is dropped around it. Teachers become no account assembly-line workers. An absolute dictatorship is set up, and reading instruction becomes as dull as the streets of East Berlin many years ago. Other public schools have wonderful creative student made books and pictures on display. SFA schools display "meaningful sentences" Other schools have contests to encourage children to read more books. SFA schools have "Homework Assemblies" to give children a bag of chips and a certificate for turning in their parent-signed homework forms 90% of the time.
It is time that reading instruction be viewed for the science that it really is, and that schools be held accountable for using programs that have been proven to be effective. The need to research and validate reading programs is essential to NCLB and to the continued growth of reading skills in our nation's children. That takes dollars.
Bob Slavin is right on the mark!