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The Every Student Succeeds Act gives states and districts significant flexibility in how they turn around struggling schools, as long as the local approaches are backed by evidence. But without support, that flexibility runs the risk of putting smaller or more rural districts at a disadvantage.

鈥淭his is a sea change from the highly prescriptive approach to school improvement [under the No Child Left Behind Act] to what can seem like a bit of a Wild West structure under ESSA,鈥� said Mike Magee, the chief executive officer of Chiefs for Change, which has created an ESSA working group of 15 experimentally minded state education leaders. 鈥淲e have potentially unprecedented flexibility in how states address school improvement鈥攂ut that鈥檚 just another factor in how high the stakes are.鈥�

As states work out how to apply ESSA鈥檚 new standards of evidence, their quest highlights the need for more research on interventions at schools with a wider array of contexts. The pool of high-quality research on education programs remains relatively small, sporadic, and focused on shorter-term gains for students.

Tying Things Together

While the federal What Works Clearinghouse has reviewed more than 10,000 studies on various interventions, a forthcoming meta-analysis based on the clearinghouse鈥檚 reviews found only 29 different interventions showed significant effects鈥攁nd the average effect was small, particularly when the interventions were in messy real-school contexts instead of highly controlled laboratory settings.

鈥淚f you look from 10,000 feet at education interventions, you can almost count on your hand the number of interventions that have truly scaled and established鈥� themselves, said Jerome D鈥橝gostino, a professor of educational studies at Ohio State University, who led the study presented at the 2016 American Educational Research Association in Washington this April.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not just the sheer volume of programs; there hasn鈥檛 been a wider effort to tie these [intervention evaluations] together in any way,鈥� D鈥橝gostino said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not like some grand designer said, 鈥楧o we have enough interventions in reading, in math, in different grade levels? It鈥檚 field-generated. ... People have been focusing on their parts of the elephant, and I鈥檓 not sure there would be a whole elephant if you brought them all together.鈥�

ESSA lays out three levels of evidence that states can choose to apply to prove an intervention works:

鈥� 鈥淪trong evidence鈥� includes at least one well-designed and -implemented experimental study, meaning a randomized controlled trial.

鈥� 鈥淢oderate evidence鈥� includes at least one well-designed and -implemented quasi-experimental study. For example, a program evaluation could use a regression-discontinuity analysis, in which researchers might look at differences in outcomes for students who scored a point above and below the entrance cutoff score for a particular program or intervention.

鈥� 鈥淧romising evidence鈥� includes at least one well-designed and -implemented correlational study that controls for selection bias, the potential differences between the types of students who choose to participate in a particular program and those who don鈥檛.

In separate guidance, the Education Department explained that districts and states should work to use the most rigorous evidence available, with intervention studies that not only meet high methodological quality, but also reflect similar students and school types as those where the intervention would be used.

鈥淭he logic model before was, pick a good intervention, implement it, and you鈥檒l get results,鈥� said Vivian Tseng, the vice president of the William T. Grant Foundation, which has been studying research use in education. 鈥淣ow, whatever you implement, there鈥檚 this idea of ongoing evaluation to see where it worked, where did it not work, and for whom. I would say the ongoing cycle of learning is needed for programs at any of these [evidence] tiers.鈥�

Proof Requirements

Those levels were developed in part from the proof required under the Obama administration鈥檚 Investing in Innovation competitive grants. It鈥檚 telling that only 43 projects met the grant鈥檚 moderate-evidence bar鈥攁nd fewer than 10 have so far had the strong evidence required to win i3鈥檚 top-tier grant.

The few interventions that have established strong bases of evidence and use over time, such as Success for All and Reading Recovery, which D鈥橝gostino evaluated for the federal Investing in Innovation program, created comprehensive infrastructure to implement programs in a wide variety of schools; trained and retrained staff that turned over; and sustained ongoing improvement and evaluation of the programs.

鈥淲hen I meet with other [intervention programs], they are so far from even thinking and conceptualizing that need for infrastructure, I鈥檝e come to the conclusion a lot of them will never get there,鈥� he said.

It can take years of effort to build a strong evidence base for a program. One of those i3 grantees, the New Teacher Center, has been conducting multiple randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental evaluations of its mentoring model since 2004, according to Ali Picucci, the center鈥檚 vice president of impact and improvement.

While the studies have produced promising results, 鈥渨e know [randomized controlled trials] occur in controlled environments and are not ideal for addressing the social complexities that we find in classrooms,鈥� Picucci said.

鈥淛ust as one-size-doesn鈥檛 fit all when it comes to clothes or educational initiatives, one study doesn鈥檛 fit all district and school contexts. It鈥檚 important for all of us to remember that interventions鈥攅ven those backed by high-quality evidence鈥攁re beginnings and not ends,鈥� said Ash Vasudeva, the vice president for strategic initiatives at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 鈥淪imply selecting an evidence-based program does not ensure that similar results can be achieved in different settings and systems.鈥�

Local Contexts Critical

In Cleveland, district officials are trying to integrate thinking about evidence into day-to-day decision making in schools.

The district has set up a website with a summary of every program available in the district, and is working to provide reviews on the effectiveness of each on key outcomes like reading and math achievement. The intervention 鈥渞eport cards鈥� do include high-quality external studies if they are available, but also include the district鈥檚 own research on an intervention鈥檚 effects for schools that used it either a lot or just a little, and feedback from principals on how easy it was to use and how well it worked for them.

鈥淲e鈥檙e evaluating programs regardless of their external body of evidence, because context matters,鈥� said Matthew A. Linick, executive director of research and evaluation for Cleveland public schools. 鈥淎s a researcher, you know the more rigorous the study is, the less generalizable it becomes. While things that work in urban districts could be helpful, Cleveland鈥檚 urban context could be very different. Just because something works in Cincinnati doesn鈥檛 mean it will work in Cleveland.鈥�

Both the U.S. Department of Education and nationwide groups like the Council of Chief State School Officers and Chiefs for Change have set up support networks for state officials to work together to identify evidence for what interventions will work in different school contexts. And the Institute of Education Sciences, the department鈥檚 research arm, is working to allow researchers and educators to search research for core elements of different programs and the effects of an intervention on specific populations.

鈥淥ne of the things we鈥檝e heard from people is they really want to see the context鈥� of the school where an intervention was done, said Ruth C. Neild, the IES acting director. 鈥淎lmost regardless of whether impacts are different for different [student] groups, ... a lot of times people need to see the intervention was done in their particular context in order to believe it.鈥�