Pilot, Test, and Assess Ideas First
Professor Tom Kane explains why schools should measure what works before scaling new programs
Pilot, test, assess. It's not the obvious answer to the question: How do we help students succeed? But as far as Professor Tom Kane is concerned, it’s one of the best answers.
When asked why, he says, “Because student behavior and teacher behavior are really complicated and it’s impossible to anticipate every unintended side effect. It’s impossible to anticipate how people are going to respond when you impose a cell phone ban or you propose a change in the teacher evaluation system. We have ideas about how people will respond, and that’s what leads people to advocate for these kinds of policies, but actually we don’t know. I have multiple times seen things that I was really optimistic would work that turned out not to work.”
One example happened a few years ago when Kane and his colleagues at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University (CEPR), which he founded, did a study of elementary math textbooks. Prior studies suggested that certain textbooks would be more effective than others. CEPR collected data from textbooks being used in six states and measured differences in student math skills. Kane assumed they’d find big differences and then redo the study annually to assess if that held.
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