Why NBPTS and Other Innovations Receive so Little
Critical Attention
By J. E. Stone
Education Consumers ClearingHouse
June 2002
The Education Commission of
the States’s (ECS) decision to review the Tennessee study of NBPTS-certified
teachers led me to take a closer look at why reform initiatives like NBPTS are
given so little critical scrutiny. Our May 2002
briefing is one of a very few critiques.
What I found is that despite
a good bit of policy analysis in the area of teaching quality, neither ECS nor
any of the other major organizations that advise policymakers publicized the
fact that NBPTS’s claims are built on a shaky foundation. I refer here to organizations such as the
regional education labs, the state departments of education, and the university
research centers. Rather, all of the
publicly voiced skepticism seems to have come from organizations that fall
outside of the governmentally funded, grant-seeking, research and policy
establishment. What is more
remarkable--in light of their interest in teaching quality--neither have these
organizations offered any direct, public criticism of the various pedagogical
fads and failures that have come to light over the decades
Feted and Fizzled
Innovations
Since the early sixties—when
I entered teaching--the number of educational innovations and initiatives that
have been feted, then fizzled is astounding.
I won’t attempt a comprehensive list but the following ten readily come
to mind:
1) whole-language reading instruction,
2) bilingual education,
3) open education,
4) self-esteem enhancement,
5) discovery learning,
6) new math,
7) learning style matching,
8) developmentally appropriate practice,
9) outcomes-based education, and
10) heterogeneous
grouping.
Where are the Reports?
Given their notoriety and
the number of organizations concerned with teaching quality, I searched Education
Week for stories referencing cautionary reports, pessimistic recommendations,
or postmortem analyses. Education
Week’s archives go back to 1981, and my assumption was that a cautionary
statement or critical investigation by a major research and policy organization
would be newsworthy.
What I found was a
remarkable absence of reports on faulty teaching innovations. If the major education research and policy
organizations issued reports on this subject, they must not have publicized
their findings. At least, “American
Education’s Newspaper of Record” references no such reports.
Education Week did contain several cautionary assessments of
bilingual education that were drawn from U. S. Department of Education
sponsored research. At the time, William
Bennett was head of USDOE and Chester E. Finn, Jr. was in charge of OERI. In particular, a number of Education Week
articles cited an American Institutes for Research study of bilingual
education. Also a 1985 article cited
USDOE sponsored studies questioning the efficacy of early intervention
programs.
Another notable exception
was a 1987 article on whole-language reading instruction written by Professor
Patrick Groff—a current member of our Education Consumers Consultants
Network. Many years in advance of the
National Reading Panel’s report, Groff found whole-language to be gravely
flawed and unsupported by sound research.
On the whole, however, articles containing references to failed or
failing teaching innovations were rare and none cited studies from the
organizations and agencies noted above.
It is as though they collectively followed a policy of “see, hear, and
speak no evil.”
Questions: Mistakes made, money wasted, potential lost?
Clearly, studies of failed
innovations would be useful to those who seek to improve teaching. For example, teachers and policymakers would
have a better chance of avoiding the same mistakes if they knew how such
innovations originate and how they are propagated. Questions of this kind could be answered by nothing more
complicated than a survey of teachers.
Studies of cost would be
worthwhile too. For example, the cost
of implementing a failed innovation, the cost of retraining teachers, the cost
of student remediation, and the human cost of unremediated failure are all
factors that teachers and policymakers would want to consider in decisions
about future innovations.
So why have the major
education research and policy organizations failed to report on ineffective
innovations?
This question is the subject
of our June
2002 Consultants Network Briefing.
It examines an excellent report from the Fordham Foundation on the
devolution of a major reform initiative--the New American Schools. In essence, NAS was unsuccessful because it
mistook decades-old fads as revolutionary reforms.
Our Briefing suggests that fads escape critical
examination because the research and policy groups that should be studying them
cannot afford to offend educators. For grant-seeking organizations,
collaborative relationships with the education community are a critical
necessity.
Policymakers listening to
the recommendations of education’s research and policy establishment should
bear this limitation in mind. Just as
most brokerage houses give only “buy” recommendations, most research and policy
organizations explore only an innovation’s promise, not its risks.