ARTICLE: How Education Schools Can Take Back Their Role in Policy

[Ryan Goble]

Great article from The Chronicle 

How Education Schools Can Take Back Their Role in Policy

By Jeffrey R. Henig

You can read thefull article HERE.

These are some passages I highlighted...

Until recently, the expertise that mattered emphasized knowledge of cognitive development, curriculum, pedagogy, and the intricacies of instruction often grounded in classroom experience. It is precisely those perspectives that are missing from much of the current debate about education policy.

What counts as expertise has shifted to mastery of management, cost-benefit calculations, multivariate analysis of large data sets, value-added assessments of teacher effectiveness, and randomized field trials more common in medical and labor research.

and

If education experts are going to reassert their authority and influence, they have to do more than circle the wagons. They need to master the tools of contemporary policy analysis and then tie them to their richer base of knowledge and craft. They need to leap academic silos and engage in creative, cross-disciplinary research that takes into account the many varied, sometimes subtle ways in which education works or doesn't work for students. They must pay attention to what happens inside schools and classrooms, but they must also attend very seriously to ways in which broader social, economic, and policy forces reinforce and constrain schools and independently affect learning wherever it occurs.