Why We Don’t Learn Much from (the Few) Effective Education Policies or Programs

On the face of it, it would seem reasonable to believe that education policy makers could learn much from successful policies and programs. But they often don't. Here are two relatively clear examples of policy makers failing to learn from effective policies/programs. In both cases, the policy makers were the members of a state board of education. One is from California, the other from Massachusetts. Both sets of policies or programs were known to state policy makers at the time that the Common

On the face of it, it would seem reasonable to believe that education policy makers could learn much from successful policies and programs. But they often don't. Here are two relatively clear examples of policy makers failing to learn from effective policies/programs. In both cases, the policy makers were the members of a state board of education. One is from California, the other from Massachusetts. Both sets of policies or programs were known to state policy makers at the time that the Common…