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Policy Ripples: On the Relationship Between Research and Policy
We
do education research in order to improve teaching and learning, and to influence
the decisions of those who set policy, whether those folks are legislators,
district or school administrators, or classroom teachers themselves. At the
same time, it is a tricky business, looking at the teaching and learning interactions
between human beings in particular contexts, assessing the effects of various
curricula, instructional strategies, and ultimately drawing conclusions…and
then trying to predict how others will interpret and use what we’ve learned.
Things can happen quickly when a certain topic gets public attention, and a line of inquiry is cast into the spotlight, and expected to have implications that sometimes go well beyond the original intent of the work. Actions may be taken, or laws written that simply could not have been predicted.
My own experience with research into policy interaction began with work in the mid 1980s, helping Michigan educators develop a “new” definition of reading and constructing a new Michigan Education Assessment Plan (MEAP) that reflected this definition. At that time, state assessments were relatively low stakes—without serious consequences for students, schools, or communities. Although the assessments we developed were considered different and innovative, there was little way to know the role that these assessments would eventually play in state, national, and international assessment of reading—in a more high stakes context—where judgments about school quality or student learning are tied to consequences, such as failure or reconstitution.
The major change in the Michigan tests was a more substantive evaluation of reading comprehension, which was highly appropriate within the policy environment in which they were created. However, that approach was much more problematic in a high stakes environment. The work that we did in Michigan had a major influence on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessment framework and tests beginning in 1992. No one paid much attention to these national assessments until various groups started doing state-by-state comparisons, and large populous states like California did not fare so well. This in turn had a major impact on reading instruction all over the country and contributed to development of legislation such as the Reading Excellence Act, and No Child Left Behind, with its Reading First component.
Recently, as I participated in the development of the 2009 NAEP reading framework and test specifications, and the next Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) assessment, my previous experience made me aware that the impact of these assessments on reading instruction around the world will ultimately be determined by the policy environment in which these assessments are enacted.
While it’s important for all educational researchers to consider their work in the context of the policy environments in which that work is likely to be used, it’s difficult to predict how our work may be used in the policy arena. A pebble in such a pond sometimes results in ripples that build beyond all imagination.
My faculty colleagues here at the School of Education, some of whom research policy itself, and others of whom conduct research that directly or indirectly influences policy makers, are known across the nation as a savvy, highly influential group. In a recent article in Education Week (9/8/04) on reading policy, three of the five faculty interviewed were from this School of Education. In this issue of Innovator, we trace some of the ways that UM School of Education researchers are shaping public understandings of education—its forms, its possibilities, its future directions.
Karen Wixson.
