Douglas Reeves, CEO and founder of the Center for Performance Assessment, comments on a recent study by Peggy Hsieh and Joel R. Levin published in the Journal of Educational Psychology. Hsieh and Levin showed that only a small percentage of education research uses a randomized experimental design (random assignment to control and experimental groups), and over the years, the percentage has been decreasing.

They point to two reasons for this. The first is a growing preference for qualitative research, a product of post-modernism and relativism in the academy. The second reason is that, empirical research is difficult to conduct and yields unpopular results, many authors simply take their studies down an easier path. I think the latter explanation is key.

Recently, I wrote a Spotlight on the failure of class size reductions in low income and low performing elementary schools. The evaluation team used an experimental design to assess the class size reduction program and found that the experimental group did no better than the control group. Needless to say, these results were unpopular, so unpopular, in fact, that the State Board of Education did not post the entire report on its website.

The significance of research design is lost on those who compared the state’s program with other research that has been done on small class sizes. But the problem is not the critics but the education researchers who have done even more to diminish the credibility of the profession.