Over the Fence

Abstract

In an effort to improve early math, science, and reading instruction, the U.S. government proposes to spend up to $75 million annually on education research, according to Jeffrey Mervis's article “Agencies launch effort to improve U.S. schools” (News of the Week, 26 Mar. p. [1995][1]). A simple analogy shows the folly of this approach. Suppose that your flower garden is doing poorly, while your next-door neighbor is growing prize-winning blooms. One approach might be to fund a multiyear research program, involving soil chemists, agronomists, and phytopathologists, hoping that their research findings may be useful in 10 years. A simpler and less expensive approach might be to lean over the fence and ask your neighbor how he does it. If other nations are outstripping the United States in math and science education, it would cost far less than $75 million per year to find out what they are doing right. Even if our research program made some astounding breakthroughs, it would take 10 years for the findings to make it into teacher training programs and 12 additional years for our first-graders to reach college age. If the Europeans, Japanese, and Chinese are ahead of us now, how much further ahead will they be in 22 years? [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.283.5410.1995