Research To Keep An Eye On...

At a retreat of the National Academy of Education last week, I heard a presentation by Greg Walton (Stanford University) that took me by surprise. This guy conducted a series of experiments that showed that simply telling black students they "belong" in college and have struggles which are common and surmountable can have a direct positive impact, increasing their college achievement. Walton's are small but randomized controlled interventions in a lab setting, which makes for great confidence in the effects he estimates. At least for this population, which I'd characterize as black college students willing to participate in an experiment (a group arguably different from the general population, and also different from the population of white students willing to participate), a brief psychological encounter in a lab seems to make a big difference. I'd need to know more before I bought stock in this one, but in the meantime, Walton's research is something I'll be keeping an eye on....

Free Research!

Check out this story from Education Week. Stanford University's School of Education says that it will make all of its academic research available free of charge.

Faculty members at Stanford University’s school of education have voted to make scholarly articles available to the public for free, a policy change that the university says makes Stanford’s education school the first such school in the nation to join the growing “open access” movement in academia.

This is a welcome development. Of course, policymakers will continue to need skilled interpreters and brokers to figure out what -- especially quantitative -- research actually says (and doesn't say) and how it is relevant to the challenges and contexts in which they work.

What are the financial costs of such a policy? And who bears them? Will other institutions -- both public and private -- follow in Stanford's footsteps?

A Blank Prescription for Policy Reform

Stanford has yet another interesting publication, Pathways, which integrates critical analysis of research on poverty with bold prescriptions for policy reform. I'm a bit late to the game in mentioning this, since the first issue came out in December, but then again as Mom-to-toddler a 6- month lag or so on my reading ain't bad.

I'm especially a fan of Becky Blank's piece which includes a list of priority efforts for antipoverty programs. Blank is whip-smart, and was recently a contender for the chancellorship here at Madison. Darn it all, she wasn't chosen.

Here's a quote from near the end of her article, which should illustrate why many of us would've loved to have her here. "Social policy evaluation is one of the least well appreciated tools of long-term policy design."

If there was one message I'd send to the presidential candidates, it's that when tackling ANY area of policy reform, please please please take the evaluation of your programs seriously. No, data isn't entirely objective, but it's a whole heck of a lot more objective than simply deciding something's working -- or not-- based entirely on politics or ideology.