H-037 and HLE-342

Three Education Controversies: Examining the Evidence

Harvard University

Fall Semester, l999-2000

Professor Richard J. Light

 Administrative Details:

We will meet every week, on Tuesdays, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00. My office hours will be announced in class, and I am also available by appointment. My offices are at the Kennedy School, Room L3l8, and at Larsen Hall 204. Telephone is 495-ll83. My staff assistant is Ms. Laura Medeiros, who is in Room L319 at the Kennedy School.

Obligations for this class:

There are weekly reading assignments. Assignments for the first eight weeks are given in detail on this syllabus, and I expect to add five more. You will have three short papers, due every several weeks. There will be a final paper. Its exact length is up to you, but it should be in the range of 20 to 30 pages, on any topic you choose that is clearly connected to the work of this course. Each student will be asked to submit a Aprospectus@ for your final paper about a month before the end of the semester, and I will give each of you individual feedback and concrete suggestions.

This class will rely heavily on four books. They are listed on page 4 of this syllabus. Each student should get all four. I will distribute several additional handouts in class.

The overarching principle of this class.

Since the topic for this course is education controversies, I want to stress how important a certain tone is for our class. Each of us brings certain hunches, certain personal experiences, certain biases to any conversation about education policy. That is entirely reasonable - after all, we have all spent many years of our lives dealing with education, either as students or as teachers or as scholars. Those thoughts and beliefs that we bring are fine. But this seminar is not intended and not designed to become a conversation about our personal experiences. I stress this point. Rather, the goal is for each of us to approach the entire enterprise with as open a mind as possible. We will focus hard on concrete evidence that underlies each controversy we discuss. My intent is that our class discussions will become reviews and debates about what the evidence shows, how rigorously was it gathered, and what we can infer from concrete evidence about designing and implementing effective policies for education. That is why this course will have five parts.

In the first part of the course, I will do most of the presenting of material, although it will be done in a seminar format that welcomes group participation. In this first part we will read about the impact of choice of research design, choice of methods for analyzing data, and a topic called meta-analysis, which enables us to combine, or aggregate, findings across several different research studies. Meta-analysis is a relatively new statistical technique, and its use is growing rapidly.

The second part of the course will focus on ability grouping, or Atracking@ as some people call it. This topic is highly controversial among educators, and indeed among many parents. We will read several original, empirical studies of the impact of tracking on student learning and other outcomes in schools. We will also read several research summaries, and meta-analyses.

The third part of the course will ask about the impact of class size on student learning. We will read arguments on both sides that sound compelling. Then we will look in depth at several empirically based studies of the impact of class size on learning. We will examine the quality of their research design, and ask why we do, or don=t, have confidence in the findings each author reports.

The fourth part of the course is the most complex. We will read the book The Bell Curve. Then we will read six rebuttals to this work from a diverse group of scholars. We will ask hard questions about different parts of the book. Such questions include, what parts of learning are shaped by a student=s home environment versus the actual work in school? What parts of each student=s capacity to learn may be constrained or helped by biological factors? Are students highly Amalleable?@ What can we say with methodological rigor about the differences in school performance among several ethnic groups? What are the policy implications for educators of such differences? And finally, since there are so many kinds of differences among applicants to certain schools or colleges that are selective, or indeed highly selective, how does all of this discussion relate to the way selections are ultimately made?

Our discussion of The Bell Curve should be wide ranging, and inclusive of sharply disagreeing points of view. Again, I repeat, the focus of our seminar is not to engage in polemic, or political lobbying. Rather, it is to look hard at concrete evidence, to ask about the quality of that evidence, and to ask what parts of the debates about education policy rest on firm, compelling data, while other parts are little more than speculation.

The fifth part of the course will examine the impact of ethnic and racial diversity on each student=s learning. There is remarkably little formal literature on this subject. Lots of assertions, but little evidence. The best sources of evidence currently available explore the impact of racial and ethnic diversity on learning in colleges, rather than in K through l2 schools. Therefore, we will look at some evidence from colleges. One key question will be, what kind of evidence do each of you find compelling? Former president of Harvard, Derek Bok, and former president of Princeton, William Bowen, have recently completed a widely discussed book on this topic of diversity and its educational implications. We will read this book and a related collection of essays, edited by Eugene Lowe.

Attached is a class-by-class reading list for the first eight weeks. I expect to add additional readings over the semester as I learn more about who is in the class. These offer a starting point for our first eight sessions. Notice there are three, written homework assignments.

Textbooks: The books we will use in this class are as follows:

          2.  R. Light, J. Singer, and J. Wilett,  By Design (paperback, 1990).

          3.  William G. Bowen and Derek C. Bok, The Shape of The River. (Princeton                         University Press, 1998).

Week 1:

In By Design, read chapters 1, 2 and 3.

In Newsweek, July 31, 1995, read ASpecial Report: The Rise of a New Class.@

Administer quiz on educational data in United States. Not graded!!

Week 2:

In By Design, read chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7.

Week 3:

In By Design, read chapters 8, 9 and l0.

In The Atlantic Monthly, September, 1995, read Nicholas LeMann, AThe Structure of Success in America: Part II.@

Assignment due on Week Three: Assume you had been president of Harvard University during the development of the SAT exams. LeMann=s two long articles lay out a clear story of how the SAT exams were developed, why they were developed, and their consequences. There were several Harvard connections. If you had been president of Harvard during the early years of the Educational Testing Service, what, if anything, would you have advised them to do differently? Why would you advise them this way? Whatever your advice, make a compelling case for it. Approximately three to five pages.

Week 4.

Charles C. Mann, ACan Meta-analysis Make Policy?@ In Science, November ll, l994.

Read Summing Up: The Science of Reviewing Research, by Richard J. Light and David Pillemer. Harvard University Press.

AUnder the Metascope.@ The Economist, May l8, l99l.

AMeta-Analysis in the Breech@. Science. August 3, l990

ANew Method of Analyzing Health Data Stirs Debate.@ The New York Times. August 2l, 1990.

ACan Meta-Analysis Make Policy?@ Science November ll, l994

Week 5:

James A. Kulik. AAn Analysis of the Research on Ability Grouping: History and Contemporary Perspective.@ University of Michigan Report #9204. 1992.

Week 6:

Robert E. Slavin. AAbility Grouping in the Middle Grades: Achievement Effects and Alternatives.@ Review of Educational Research. 1990, pp. 471-499.

Assignment Due on Week 6

You have now read two meta-analyses about the impact of >tracking,= or ability grouping, or skill-grouping. The two authors disagree about the cumulative findings from published research. Question One: If you were going to read the original, actual articles, one by one, that examine the impact of ability grouping on students= performance in school, what specific features of each article would you focus on? Question Two: Why do you believe the two meta-analyses, both done by distinguished, first-class policy researchers, reach different conclusions for education policy?

Take no more than two to three pages for answering each question.

Week 7:

Robert Slavin, AClass Size and Student Achievement: Is Smaller Better?@ Contemporary Education, Fall, l990.

Robert Slavin, Class Size and Student Achievement: Small Effects of Small Classes, Educational Psychologist. 1989. pp. 99-ll0.

Mary Lee Smith and Gene V. Glass. AMeta-analysis of Research on Class Size and Its Relationship to Attitudes and Instruction.@ American Educational Research Association Journal, 1980.

Barbara Nye, et al. AThe Lasting Benefits Study.@ Center of Excellence for Research in Basic Skills. Nashville, Tennessee. 1993.

Reading Assignment: Frederick Mosteller. AThe Tennessee Study of Class Size in the Early School Grades.@ The Future of Children, Fall 1995.

Homework Assignment: In three pages or less, explain using evidence from the readings why you find the research on the impact of class size on students= learning compelling, or not compelling. How much confidence do you have in the findngs reported in our readings? Why do you have high confidence, or why do you not have high confidence? Use the ideas we have developed in this seminar to write a short, crisp essay.

The Bell Curve, and responses to this book. Details will be presented in class. Students will be asked to make short presentations for class discussion. Also read book of essays edited by Eugene Lowe, Promise and Dilemma.

Weeks 12, 13