Comments on: The Devil’s in the Implementation http://jaypgreene.com/2008/05/13/the-devils-in-the-implementation/ With Help From Some Friends Fri, 25 May 2012 01:01:55 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Pajamas Media » A ‘To-Do’ List for the Next Education President http://jaypgreene.com/2008/05/13/the-devils-in-the-implementation/#comment-1573 Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:49:39 +0000 http://jaypgreene.wordpress.com/?p=89#comment-1573 [...] There was a huge dust-up in Washington recently over the program known as Reading First, when the official evaluation came out and found that it made no difference to outcomes. Some of the program’s defenders [...]

]]> By: Greg Forster http://jaypgreene.com/2008/05/13/the-devils-in-the-implementation/#comment-329 Wed, 14 May 2008 12:58:53 +0000 http://jaypgreene.wordpress.com/?p=89#comment-329 There’s one point Jay makes here that I think could use some amplification, and that relates to some earlier discussion on the posts here this week on the role of science. The reason it’s naive to think that “educators are eagerly awaiting being informed of what works and will gladly do it once they are told” is not because educators don’t care what’s effective. As Jay says, it’s because educators already have practices “that they believe are effective.”

I think that helps explain why people think the solution is always more education for the teachers. It’s an information problem.

However, as the game theorists are always eager to tell us, information problems are a lot more difficult to solve than they appear to be. Information does not “want to be free.” It has a cost. And I’m not just talking about the time you have to spend in teacher training classes.

The fact is, these teachers have been subject to tons of “professional development,” and most of it appears to have been wasted time. There appears to be no positive impact from teacher training the way it’s done now. So when you come along with your scientifically based approach to reading, you look to them like just the latest useless fad. Sure, they’ll sit through the classes if you make them. But after decades of useless fads, why would they bother to take you seriously?

In other words, the biggest cost to acquiring better information is the cost of figuring out which information is reliable. And given the track record – decades of useless teacher training and a good solid century of educational fads (see Diane Ravitch’s book) that mostly came to nothing – they have good reason to believe that the cost of figuring out which information is good will not be worth paying.

So what do you do? Change their incentives so that the price is worth paying.

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