WHY IS IMPORTANT THAT TEACHERS RECOGNIZE THE DIFFERRENCE BETWEEN INDEPENDENT, PEER-REVIEWED, UNBIASED RESEARCH, AND THE ADVOCACY RESEARCH THAT MININFORMS AND IS PREVALENT IN EDUCATION?After ten years of submitting to corporate reformers commanding education Policy, public school teachers have earned the right to question, challenge, and even reject their inadequate schemes. By adopting the motto “Every claim requires evidence, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” teachers can give the first step to reclaim their rightful role as stakeholders in the important goal of improving public education for all.
Despite their lack of scientific value and, in some instances the lack of logic or coherence, think tank reports are widely disseminated through mainstream media outlets. To a remarkable degree, they shape and drive news coverage of key education topics in state legislatures and Congress, as well as in the press (including Education Week). Their findings become part of the conventional wisdom without ever having been subject to expert review. This may be good partisan politics, but it is terrible social science, and it harms efforts to improve the nation’s schools.
Unfortunately, academic experts rarely review or criticize think tank reports. As a rule, social scientists consider most of these reports to be of little value and best ignored. The primary purpose of social science review and criticism is to further a deliberative process in which knowledge is advanced, methods improved, and conclusions tested. Most think tank reports are, from this perspective, literally a waste of time. Yet for millions of children and their parents, teachers, and communities, these reports are of vital importance, since they are repeatedly used by policymakers to shape the nature and scope of available educational opportunities.
Because the stakes for America’s children are so high, the two academic centers with which we’re Associated—the Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State University and the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder—together launched the Think Tank Review Project (www.thinktankreview.org) to provide expert reviews of think tank reports. The reviews, written for a general audience, assess reports in much the same fashion as would a reviewer for a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal. From Ed Review “Thrutiness in Education” http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/edweek2-28-07.pdf
