The Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness opens its annual conference in Washington today with a closer look at a research problem that has been plaguing policymakers and educators alike in this age of program scale-ups: What makes a promising educational intervention sputter out when it’s moved to a different context?
Researchers will discuss the variations in the effects of everything from kindergarten curricula to charter schools to teacher merit-pay programs. Since the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, stopped holding its own research conference, SREE has been one of the primary events to highlight IES-supported research, and it’s easy to see the increasing federal focus on not just what works in learning, but when, where, how, and for whom.
I’ll be live-tweeting and blogging the conference through Saturday. Whether you are attending the conference or reading up from home, give me your thoughts on the presentations here in comments or via my Twitter handle, @sarahdsparks.