I'm all for building schools dedicated to the arts, especially for students hailing from low-income neighborhoods. I'm just not sure it's worth $230 million while kids in other districts learn in classroom trailers.

Kevin Carey expounds upon the reasons that research doesn't always or even often make it to policymakers and into their policies. His suggested remedies are fine, especially the appeal for better writing. And yet, conspicuously absent from his piece is that research--at least education research--is rarely conclusive, and sometimes mere weeks pass between the publication of two different studies of the same topic that unearth about that one topic two utterly different and opposed findings.

Rarely addressed is the mutability of education research; certainly, reports can be tweaked in one way or another to reveal the data the authors desire. Furthermore, how many of such reports end with the limp, depressing words, "More research on this topic is needed"? (The practical reader??wonders: "Well, why??didn't you do it, then?") Policymakers generally have ideas about education that they've formed from their own experiences, listening to their constituents, or considering political ramifications. They use studies not to form their opinions but to bolster those they already harbor--and maybe, in rare instances, to??develop an area in which their opinions are not yet fully formed. Who can blame them, though? Were they to predicate every decision on the conclusions of the extant research, they'd have no clarity on anything. In education, as in most policy topics, policymakers' instincts and first principles matter--and few are the research studies that will change them.

Washington, D.C.'s Thurgood Marshall Academy charter school is featured in today's Wall Street Journal.

Apparently tired of being called defeatist defenders of the status quo, the Economic Policy Institute (home of Lawrence Mishel and Richard Rothstein) just released a policy statement calling for a "broader, BOLDER approach" to education. It's a smart and savvy strategy: they go out of their way to say that school improvement matters, but they also want a focus on other social issues:

Education policy in this nation has typically been crafted around the expectation that schools alone can offset the full impact of low socioeconomic status on learning. Schools can--and have--ameliorated some of the impact of social and economic disadvantage on achievement. Improving our schools, therefore, continues to be a vitally important strategy for promoting upward mobility and for working toward equal opportunity and overall educational excellence.

Evidence demonstrates, however, that achievement gaps based on socioeconomic status are present before children even begin formal schooling. Despite the impressive academic gains registered by some schools serving disadvantaged students, there is no evidence that school improvement strategies by themselves can close these gaps in a substantial, consistent, and sustainable manner.

Nevertheless, there is solid evidence that policies aimed directly at education-related social and economic disadvantages can improve school performance and student achievement. The persistent failure of policy makers to act on that evidence--in tandem with a school-improvement agenda--is a major reason why the association between social and economic disadvantage and low student achievement remains so strong.

This reasonable argument attracted the support of many co-signers, including Fordham trustee Diane Ravitch. But I see three big problems with the statement.

First, while admitting the importance of school improvement, it's REALLY squishy on school accountability:

The public has a right to hold schools accountable for raising student achievement. However, test scores alone cannot describe a school's contribution to the full range of student outcomes. New accountability systems should combine appropriate qualitative and quantitative methods, and they will be considerably more expensive than the flawed accountability systems currently in use by the federal and state governments.

You could be kind and read that as "mend it don't end it" on accountability, but I read it as "we don't really want accountability but we can't quite admit it."

Second, the group's big idea--that poor kids need high-quality preschool--is riddled with the same challenge as the big idea the group is challenging--that schools alone can narrow the achievement gap. Namely: we don't have any experience bringing high-quality preschool to scale, just like we don't have any experience bringing "no excuses" schools to scale. To my knowledge, the number of high-quality pre-K programs with strong evidence of effectiveness can be counted on one hand. (Sara Mead, am I missing something? Update: Sara says I am.) So why should we feel any better about putting our eggs in the preschool basket?

And finally, while it's fair to say that "schools alone" can't solve all these social problems, we shouldn't pretend that most schools are coming anywhere close to doing all they could be doing to narrow achievement gaps. As long as the vast majority of inner-city schools, in particular, use watered-down curricula, hire inadequate teachers, and refuse to create a culture of high expectations, then we won't know just how much "schools alone" could do.

Is this a broader approach? Sure. A bolder approach? Hardly.

Mike is too gentle with this broader, bolder initiative. First, a chicken and egg problem arises. Improving education is generally touted as the seminal route by which the nation can decrease social and economic inequality--but the bolder, broader folks think that decreasing social and economic inequality is crucial if America is to improve k-12 education. Puzzling. And then there's all this:

Nevertheless, there is solid evidence that policies aimed directly at education-related social and economic disadvantages can improve school performance and student achievement. The persistent failure of policy makers to act on that evidence--in tandem with a school-improvement agenda-is a major reason why the association between social and economic disadvantage and low student achievement remains so strong.

Note the part I've bolded. What does it mean? Are readers to believe that the "association between social and economic disadvantage and low student achievement remains so strong" because policy makers haven't confronted every type of inequality at the same time, in tandem with school-improvement agendas? While we're at it, perhaps the authors can go even broader by adding some foreign affairs components and connecting the whole, overarching scheme to a plan to provide housing for every family and daisies for all schoolchildren?

You get the point. The recommendations--"Pay more attention to the time students spend out of school," "Increase investment in health services," etc.--are each, in and of themselves, incredibly large and complicated and expensive policy projects. To loop them all together in a mish mash; to insert some clich?? paragraphs about being bold and broad and far-reaching and whatnot; and then put it all in a package, tie it up with a bow, and label it "Education Reform" creates a product that??is neither??inspiring??nor workable (and one that will go largely unnoticed). Not to mention: Eduwonk Andy Rotherham reads the proposals and wants to disco--for good reason.

The California Charter Schools Association published an important study yesterday that's making news today . Its findings from Los Angeles are consistent with previous charter research : L.A. charter schools tend to outperform similar, nearby public schools; "mature" charter schools outperform start-ups; and charters are particularly effective for African-American students.

What was refreshingly different was the local district's reaction. Consider this from the Los Angeles Times :

Ramon C. Cortines, L.A. Unified's newly appointed senior deputy superintendent, said the report pointed to how traditional schools could learn from charters--a strikingly different attitude from that typically expressed by district officials.

"I think that what it says is that they have some best practices, and those should be replicated in the district in all schools," he said. "I would say the same about islands of excellence in the Unified district.... We need to each learn from each other."

He said the district Monday held the first in a series of meetings that will bring together principals from charters and traditional schools to discuss how they can learn from one another.

I'm not going to presume that these meetings are going to lead to much, but they are a step in the right direction. Hooray, Ray!

The Weekly Standard looks at the Obama-Ayers connection.

Here's another analysis explaining why it's "good politics" for the candidates to bash NCLB--something Senator John McCain has so far been unwilling to do.

With all the talk about Reading First and scientifically-based reading research of late, this unusual reading strategy caught my eye. It claims reading to fido has its advantages:

Without a scientific study, Pluchino [reading teacher] said, it is difficult to determine whether reading to Amelia has directly improved the students' reading ability. But every student in the class has moved up a reading level since last fall, she said, and they are now reading faster and with more fluency.

Yes, dog is man's best friend, but it remains to be seen whether he's a reading teacher's too--at least until someone coughs up some biscuits for an evaluation.

As you can see, we're not exactly doing cartwheels over here upon hearing what Eleanor Holmes Norton had to say about the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. She's apparently concerned about "protecting the children." There was not one mention in the Washington Post article, however, about basing future funding decisions on the evidence regarding impacts of the program. Choice supporters (like ourselves) would surely like it if the rigorous external evaluation of the program pointed to significant and large positive impacts for children participating in the program, but alas, it's simply not that cut and dry.

The first year impact evaluation (released last June), in fact, measures differences occurring just 7 months after the start of the students' first year in the program. Not surprisingly, researchers found no statistically significant impacts, positive or negative, on student reading or math achievement for year one. They did, however, find that the program had substantial positive impact on parents' views of school safety (i.e., parents in the treatment group perceived their child's school to be less dangerous than parents in the control group) and on parents' overall satisfaction with their child's school. These findings echo what we have learned in other studies; that is, that parents want choices for their children and that they care about a wider variety of outcomes (e.g., school safety) than the outcomes preferred by other education stakeholders (e.g, student achievement). The executive summary of the evaluation closes with this:

The findings here are based on information collected only a year after students applied to the program and may not reflect the consistent impacts of the OSP [Opportunity Scholarship Program] over a longer period of time.... The first year, results, therefore provide an early look at student experiences in what was a transitional year for most of them. Future reports will examine impacts 2 and 3 years after application to the program, when any short-term effects of students' transition to new schools may have dissipated.

Unfortunately, the political shenanigans surrounding this program may draw the curtain on it before the program has time to gain traction and potentially demonstrate results for longer than a 7 measly months--an admittedly in-flux time period for transitioning students.