Commenting on their participation in the American Educational Research Association's annual conference, education policy bloggers are getting the responsibility for undertanding education research backwards. Basically they want the research community to make the lives of legislative aides easier, or they think education research will remain irrelevant to legislation.  What they don't understand is that research is becoming important to the powerful interests with a stake in education policy, and it is the job of legislative staff to make sense of what's important to their legislators. It is the staff who will be forced to learn an unfamiliar  language.

Your editor thinks legislative staffers in education masy be just a bit too comfortable in their roles as information gatekeepers.  Like education writers, the legislative staff in k-12 education hasn't paid much attention to education research because until recently it really hasn't mattered much to education legislation. Yes, legislators wave studies by Eric Hanushek as evidence of the need for vouchers or by Linda Darling-Hammond as a reason every teacher has to be certified. But they are not waving the studies because they understand their validity or weaknesses - indeed the less they know, the better; they are waiving the studies because they happen to support legislators' pre-existing policy preferences.

"Science" has been largely irrelevant to the work of Capitol Hill's education committees.  But Alexander Russo goes a bit too far if he is suggesting the same holds true for Congress as an institution.  Any observer of C-SPAN can see the keen interest of Senators and Congressmen in the complex techical questions surrounding stem cell research, ballistic missile defense, global warming, contamination of spinach and dog food, VIOXX, auto emmissions, etc. etc.  It is no great feat of deductive readsoning to conclude that staffers on those committes and for those legislators understand it is their responsibility to understand the technical issues.

The days when an education committee staff member could dismiss a complex study about student performance or what constitutes an effective educational program because they didn't have time to read it or it made their eyes glaze over are numbered. If you believe No Child Left Behind will be reauthorized in any form, you must understand that school systems will be driven by calculations of Adequate Yearly Progress and the sales of educational products and services by what constitututes Scientifically Based Research. These are technical questions and, looking to the future, staff will either learn to decifer them or be replaced by those with the appropriate skill sets.

"As ye sow, so shall ye reap." Over the last two decades state and federal legislators  - with the help of their legislative aides - have been trying to turn k-12 education policy into an exercise in "data driven decision making." That are succeeding.  So the typical education number cruncher can keep right on doing what she is doing and expect only to become more relevant to policy.  The typical legislative staffer specializing in k-12 education is the one who needs to make some changes before his comfort zone becomes that cave mentioned below.

_________________________________


On Capitol Hill “Academics often are not even let into the building. And even if they come in as Fellows, they are treated as incompetent and slow-moving interns.” Alexander Russo of This Week in Education drew on his experience as a former Capitol Hill aide to offer advice for getting more education research into public policy.

At this morning’s AERA session “From Research to Policy to Practice,” Russo urged researchers to acknowledge the clash between their culture of methodical long-term projects and that of harried legislative staff. He likened Hill staffers to hummingbirds: They’re “fluttery, fast, anxious, all over the place.” To get their attention you have to give them something relevant to pending legislation.

If researchers want to improve education policy they have to keep up with what is happening in the policy world, he said. “Come out of your cave and get up to speed on what policy people are doing.”....

If you’re not satisfied with the influence your research has, then study and imitate the strategies of media influentials, even if you may not agree with their point of view....  “Think about the successes of the handful of academics who have broken through,” he said. “How have Diane Ravitch, Eric Hanushek, Linda Darling-Hammonds, and Gary Orfield managed to get their work into the public arena? Steal their strategies.”

Paul Baker, EducationPR, April 12.