The Graduate School of Education focuses significant effort on fact-based educational reforms based on hard evidence and research. However, many educational reforms are implemented without documented track records.
Russ Whitehurst, the Director of the Institute of Educational Sciences spoke at the GSE about the need for more scientific methods in educational policy-making on Friday.
The Institute functions as the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education. It is charged with researching and suggesting new educational policies.
Whitehurst "is a guy who is absolutely at the center of the federal government's agenda for education research," Graduate School of Education Assistant Dean Tom Kecskemethy said.
Whitehurst's speech focused on the use of scientific research methods in setting federal education policy. As an outspoken advocate of scientific methodology, the director stressed that politics must be left out of educational policy decisions. Federal directives, he says, must be solely motivated by evidence from research.
Whitehurst identified the need for a "culture of science" in federal education policy. He lamented the lack of funding for research projects, despite a steady increase since 1994.
Researchers themselves were not immune from Whitehurst's criticism. He said that studies must be more focused on the practical implementations of their findings.
Whitehurst also presented a methodology for research he referred to as the "what works" system.
Although open to the public, the speech was intended for the GSE and other Philadelphia education researchers. As a result, its content was technical in nature and geared towards an informed audience.
"It's necessarily a technical issue," Kecskemethy said.
Whitehurst also addressed the national controversy over high-stakes achievement exams. He did not take either side of the argument, instead stating that different studies have yielded conflicting conclusions on the exams' effects. In some cases, the same data has been interpreted differently.
GSE Dean Susan Fuhrman originally invited Whitehurst to Penn during the summer of 2003. Both she and the director wanted to strengthen the lines of communication between the federal government and researchers at Penn.
"Many of our faculty are engaged in research that is sponsored by [Whitehurst's] institute," Kecskemethy said.
Prior to the public speech, Whitehurst attended a panel discussion with several Penn professors engaged in research. The three panelists were GSE professors Rebecca Maynard, John Fantuzzo and Jon Supovitz.
Kecskemethy was more than pleased with the day's events.
"This is what academic life is about, to do an important session with people out there who are changing things," he said.
