Clark County School District released Monday their “study results” for All-Day K. This highly regarded bastion of academic analysis surprised no one by releasing figures the same day as the start of the 2007 Legislative Session that support their very political and self-serving contention. I don’t think they could have been more transparently biased and obvious if they tried. All one has to do to analyze their assessment information is to ask two simple questions. Who wants the money and who did the study?

Yesterday’s Las Vegas Review-Journal article by Antonio Planas quoted appropriate reactions from State Sen. Bob Beers and political activist Chuck Muth.

State Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, called the study “laughable.” He said he’s not surprised that full-day kindergarten students performed better than half-day kindergarten students in the second grade. Beers said it’s the results after second grade that he’s interested in. “Calling it longitudinal is over the top,” Beers said of the study. “Studies do show remnant effects of full-day kindergarten by the second grade. Few show effects by the third grade. Most don’t show any effect by junior high and high school.”

Carson City conservative activist Chuck Muth said the district’s study should not be given any credibility. “No one should trust anything in that report,” Muth said, noting the school district got the results it wanted to get. “They are a biased source.”

The Clark County School District has inadvertently raised even bigger issues than their feeble attempt to counter contradictory research. As an unintended consequence, they have put front and center the problems with government lobbying in the Legislature and the reason much of modern American education ignores valid research while embracing the spurious.

Research and Innovation: Let the Buyer Beware by Dr. J.E. Stone and Dr. Andrea Clements of East Tennessee State University explains the myopic and self-serving nature of research in public schools. They write about the lack of historical impact of solid research in the field and why ineffective fads abound:

Another explanation offered by researchers is that schools don’t know good research when they see it. They are easily drawn to familiar practices supported by weak evidence. Unfamiliar practices supported by very credible evidence are often ignored. As discussed below, there is merit to this view. From the standpoint of science, experimental studies are far more convincing than descriptive and correlational ones, yet school personnel often ignore the stronger and adopt innovations suggested by the weaker.

One other explanation popular with researchers is the institutional inertia warps and retards progress. Plainly this view also has merit. All organizations encourage some possibilities and restrict others. All are comfortable with certain ways of conducting themselves and uncomfortable with others.

We have a prime example of this in Nevada from the reaction of our education leaders to the State of the State address on January 22nd. Nevada’s institutional experts in education drew a complete blank regarding Gov. Gibbons’ reference to the Edmonton model. The media widely reported this reaction and some tried to chime in that this was a failure on the part of Gibbons in not consulting them. Actually, it confirms the assertions made by Stone and Clements that public educational systems ignore and are unaware of research that does not fit their narrow interests, doctrines or worldview.

I asked the following at the time. Which is worse, that they do not present contradictory research to policy makers, the public, and media or they are not aware of it?

Congratulations are in order for the proponents of All-Day K. In their short-term, blind zeal to secure $186 million to fund this most recent distraction from Nevada’s real academic problems, they have overreached and opened the door to reveal the long-term, deeper issues of government lobbying government and faux research to achieve a pre-determined goal at the expense of taxpayers.

The research was conducted by independent researchers who had no stake in the outcomes.
Dr. Martin Kozloff’s rule for telling the difference between baloney & serious claims in education research.

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