Evidence Matters: Building a Rigorous Research Base for Effective Instruction
Sara Pixley, PhD
Strategic Research Leader | Driving Impact in Education for All & Product Innovation | Champion for Equity
In?a recent article in EdSurge, Heather Hill at the Harvard Graduate School of Education commented on the claims education vendors make about the effectiveness of their products and services:?
Curriculum information and professional development programs usually claim to be “evidence-based” and “standards-aligned” but what those terms mean vary considerably, depending on the provider, according to Heather Hill, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “For instance, I have seen curriculum materials and professional development programs claim impacts on students on the basis of a single case study — i.e., this one school tried out our product and their scores went up (without an experimental control, it’s extremely difficult to verify such claims),” Hill wrote in an email to EdSurge.?
Ultimately, Hill believes the loss of clearinghouse information will make it tougher for schools to select high-quality instructional programs: “[Without it] schools will be back in the 1990s, when it was the Wild West of instructional programs selling materials to schools with little basis in evidence that they work to help kids learn,” she wrote.?
At Great Minds, we agree that evidence matters. Our founder and CEO Emeritus Lynne Munson has previously written about the need for research-based instructional strategies and independent reviews of instructional materials. And our current CEO, former Louisiana education chief, John White , ensured all instructional materials used in his state supported learning gains.?
My colleagues and I have the same goal for classrooms nationwide. That’s why we’re working to further develop an evidence base of validated third-party studies assessing the effectiveness of our products and services. Over the past two months, we’ve released a study by Johns Hopkins University assessing the impacts of our curricula and services in our partner district San Tan Heights, a study by the University of Southern California assessing the effectiveness of our Eureka Math2 curriculum, and a study in partnership with independent research consultants North Third assessing the effectiveness of Eureka Math TEKS Edition.?
And there’s more to come. Additional efficacy studies in the works include: ?
The curricula and services our team of educators put out in the world drive learning gains, but don’t take our word for it: please read these studies and see the evidence for yourself.?