[NLA] US Dept. of Ed. Plan

[John Comings]

I've been told by our US Department of Education grant monitor that 
the Bush administration will release its plan for the Department on 
February 7th. She couldn't tell me anything that is in the plan, and 
so I have no specific information to share.  I assume it will be up 
on the www.ed.gov website on the 7th, and we should all take a look 
at it.

I'm sure that "evidence-based education" will be part of the plan, 
and our grant monitor did share the overheads from a speech given by 
Russ Whitehurst, the Assistant Secretary of OERI, that defined EBE as:

"the integration of professional wisdom with the best available 
empirical evidence in making decisions about how to deliver 
instruction."

"Professional wisdom" is defined as "the judgment that individuals 
acquire through experience and the increased professional wisdom that 
is reflected in numerous ways, including the effective identification 
and incorporation of local circumstances into instruction."

"Empirical evidence" is defined in terms of both "quality" and 
"relevance"

Quality is defined both as coming from well-executed research but 
prioritizes methodologies in this order

1. Randomized trial
2. quasi-experimental, including before and after
3. Correlational study with statistical controls
4. Correlational study without statistical controls
5. Case Studies.

"Relevance" is defined as the intervention, outcome measures, 
and study subjects were similar to those in the real practice setting 
and that the number of study subjects were sufficient to justify a 
generalization to all of the population involved in the real practice 
setting.



----------------------------------------
John Comings                     Phone: 617.496.0516
NCSALL -- 106 Nichols House      Fax:   617.495.4811
7 Appian Way                     Email: john_comings at harvard.edu
Graduate School of Education     Web:   http://ncsall.gse.harvard.edu
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138

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