Searching for Science to Guide Good Teaching

Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst says education research is "the work of a generation . . . not the work of a few years." (By Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)
Buy Photo

Whitehurst's zeal for research sometimes has landed him in awkward spots. Two years ago, Spellings went to Capitol Hill to pitch a $100 million plan to fund vouchers to help low-income students in poorly performing public schools pay for private school. Just a few days earlier, Whitehurst's Institute of Education Sciences had released a study that found that most public school students did as well in math and reading as their private school peers. Spellings told reporters she hadn't yet read the study.

Whitehurst, 63, was chairman of the psychology department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook before he moved into the administration. His academic career has been devoted to studying how children learn to read, and he believes science can save schools. Always precise, Whitehurst notes the phrase "scientifically based research" appears 111 times in the No Child Left Behind law. (He reminds a visitor that anyone checking that total should know the phrase appears in the statute with and without a hyphen.)

The institute's What Works Clearinghouse acts as a Consumer Reports of education products, vetting studies to help schools decide which programs are worth investment. In one case, it found a reading program that bills itself as a "universal literacy system" had done some good but had a "potentially negative" effect on comprehension.

With a $575 million annual budget, the institute funds studies at major universities on reading, math, teacher incentive programs and other topics. Whitehurst said a major insight has emerged from such studies: The success of students depends more on who teaches them than on nearly any other factor. Teacher quality trumps curriculum and education funding. With a good teacher, children from poor families overcome the odds.

"You can take all of these risk factors and have the child in a class of a highly effective teacher, and it makes a world of difference," Whitehurst said. "People are surprised by how powerful it is."

What makes a teacher good?

"We don't know," Whitehurst said. That's the next question for research.

Some people see all the studies as wasted effort. Gary Ratner, founder of Bethesda-based Citizens for Effective Schools, thinks the recipe for a good school is simple: a challenging curriculum, teachers who know their subject and how to teach, and family support.

"Most of this research, the educators don't read it. They don't use it," Ratner said. "Why are they doing it?"

Kevin Welner, professor and director of the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said many education studies are bunk. He even helps give out annual awards for shoddy research.

Welner also said the institute's strong preference for one research method can be limiting. "If this works out so that all we're looking at is a narrow outcome -- such as 'Have test scores gone up in reading?' -- we might be missing understanding of what it is, for example, about a curriculum that results in the higher performance," Welner said.

Robert C. Pianta, dean of the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education, which gets some funding from the institute, said the work Whitehurst oversees is "helping us gain traction on complicated questions."

Whitehurst's six-year term ends in November. He said he hopes the rise of data-driven decision-making in education will continue when a new administration begins. He drew a comparison to a shift he observed as a child on his grandfather's North Carolina tobacco farm. His grandfather, Whitehurst said, went from seeking advice from neighbors to seeking information from scientists at agricultural conventions.

"It is the work of a generation we're involved in," Whitehurst said, "not the work of a few years."

He added: "Everybody's been to school, and most people have opinions about what's good and what's bad. But the promise is here to move forward in a way that was not here a decade ago."