Assessing the Rationales for Educational Reforms: A Test of the Professional Development, Comprehensive Reform, and Direct Instruction Hypotheses. Policy Research Report

Educational reforms are advocated based on rationales that emerge from the research literature. However, evaluation studies seldom examine whether the rationales used to argue for a reform actually hold up when empirical evidence is examined after the reform has been implemented. This paper examines survey data from 3 years of analyses of early reading interventions to examine 3 of the rationales that were used to argue for the program. First, there was evidence to support the argument that teachers need time to collaborate about improving educational outcomes. This study found that 2 years of funding for early reading reforms (Reading Recovery, Success for All, Literacy Collaborative, full day kindergarten, First Steps, Even Start, Accelerated Schools Project, and Four Blocks) provided a margin of difference for collaborative efforts among teachers to promote reading related outcomes. Second, the argument that comprehensive reform strategies promote gains in student outcomes was supported, but not all reform models had their intended effects. Finally, there was no evidence from this study that the direct/explicit approach to reading instruction improved student outcomes, although this claim merits more systematic study in the future. (Contains 56 references, 7 notes, and 6 tables of data.) (Author/RS)