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Scaling up experiments to reduce educational inequality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2020

STEPHEN W. RAUDENBUSH*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago Department of Sociology, Harris School of Public Policy, and Committee on Education, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
*
*Correspondence to: University of Chicago Department of Sociology, Harris School of Public Policy, and Committee on Education, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

For educational researchers, Al-Ubaydli et al. raise a crucial question: How can the science of scaling experimental innovations contribute to school improvement? By assessing how particular innovative programs work, why, for whom and under what conditions, experimenters test theories: about how children and youth learn, about how adults can collaborate to create the required learning opportunities and about how policy can supply the required incentives and resources to support such effective collaboration. My focus in this response article thus shifts from the perspective of innovators who hope to scale their interventions to the perspective of practitioners who face the challenge of adopting, adapting or borrowing ideas from experimental studies and harmonizing those ideas with expert clinical judgment.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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