These are good times for evidence-based reform in education. Due in particular to Investing in Innovation (i3) and the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the number of proven programs in all subjects and grade levels in increasing, and as i3 programs come to the ends of their evaluations, the number of proven programs should accelerate (even though there are also sure to be many disappointments).
The increasing numbers of programs proven effective in rigorous research creates new opportunities for policy and practice in education. Already, School Improvement Grants (SIG) are newly introducing an option for schools to choose proven, comprehensive reform models. Other areas of policy may also soon begin to encourage or incentivize use of programs with strong evidence.
If these changes in policy begin to happen, it will begin to matter whether educational programs proven to be effective are in fact ready for prime time, meaning that they are ready to be disseminated and supported in the form they existed when they were successfully evaluated. It would be catastrophic if educators and policy makers began looking on the What Works Clearinghouse, for example, or looking for programs that meet the EDGAR standards for strong or moderate evidence of effectiveness, and found many program that were unavailable, or unrealistic, or impractical.
Much as providing evidence of effectiveness is an advance in education, there is a real need for a determination of the degree to which programs are also ready for widespread implementation.
Some indicators of readiness for prime time would be easy to assess. For example, programs that lack a web site, do not offer materials or training, or otherwise do not exist in anything like the form in which they were evaluated cannot be considered ready for implementation. Some programs used procedures in their evaluation that could never be replicated, such as science programs that provide each experimental class with enough graduate students to monitor and assist every lab group. Some proven technology products run on hardware that no longer exists.
Many studies use measures of learning outcomes that are closely aligned with what was taught in the experimental but not the control group. Such studies might be excluded on the basis that the overaligned measure does not have meaning beyond the experiment itself.
Educators who choose to use proven programs have a right to be confident that the programs they have selected are, if implemented well, likely to result in enhanced performance on measures they care about. Finding a lot of programs that cannot be implemented under ordinary circumstances and with meaningful measures will diminish interest in evidence-based reform.
Evidence-based reform itself is ready for prime time in education, but its future depends on whether it is perceived to produce genuine benefits for children. We need to make sure that the proven programs we offer to educators meet their needs and those of the students, not just scientific standards.