Chapter 1 Introduction: Evidence and Decision Making

Abstract

Much of the methodological literature currently influential in the education policy community has focused on research studies and assessments intended to support generalizable conclusions about “what works” or what students “know and can do.” Until recently, far less attention has been paid to how educators actually interpret and use this information in making routine decisions in their local contexts of work; to what kinds of evidence may be needed to support those decisions; to the social structures, organizational routines, and patterns of interaction that shape the ways in which information is interpreted and used; or to how these practices might be improved to better support learning. As Phillips (this volume) notes, “the complex relation between evidence and generalizations, and particularly between evidence and courses of action, tends to be oversimplified” (p. 377). The standards-based reform movement, with its emphasis on performance-based accountability, has further focused attention on a particular source of evidence—standardized tests of student achievement— and a “theory of action” for how this information would function within the system. As framed by Elmore and Rothman (1999), following the 1994 reauthorization of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA):