The Reform Without Cost? A Reply to Our Critics

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 78, Issue FEB, 1996, Pages 442-444

  Brewer, Dominic J ^a   Rees, Daniel I ^b   Argys, Laura M ^b  

^a RAND CORPORATION   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 1542398812     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. See, for example, Anne Wheelock, Crossing the Tracks: How 'Untracking' Can Save America's Schools (New York: New Press, 1992).
2. Our results are reported in Laura M. Argys, Daniel I. Rees, and Dominic J. Brewer, "The Impact of Ability Grouping on High School Achievement: Evidence from NELS," National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C., 1995; and Daniel I. Rees, Laura M. Argys, and Dominic J. Brewer, "Tracking in the United States: Descriptive Evidence from NELS," Economics of Education Review, vol. 15. 1996, in press.
3. Our results are reported in Laura M. Argys, Daniel I. Rees, and Dominic J. Brewer, "The Impact of Ability Grouping on High School Achievement: Evidence from NELS," National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C., 1995; and Daniel I. Rees, Laura M. Argys, and Dominic J. Brewer, "Tracking in the United States: Descriptive Evidence from NELS," Economics of Education Review, vol. 15. 1996, in press.
4. Argys, Rees, and Brewer, op. cit.; and Rees, Argys, and Brewer, op. cit.
5. Argys, Rees, and Brewer, op. cit.; and Rees, Argys, and Brewer, op. cit.
6. Thomas B. Hoffer, "Middle School Ability Grouping and Student Achievement in Science and Mathematics," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, vol. 14, 1992, pp. 205-27.
7. Jeannie Oakes, Multiplying Inequalities: The Effects of Race, Social Class, and Tracking on Opportunities to Learn Math and Science (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1990). Slavin also suggests that there is evidence that teacher perceptions with regard to class homogeneity closely correspond to information provided by school administrators. See Robert E. Slavin et al., Alternatives to Ability Grouping (Baltimore: Center for Research on Effective Schooling for Disadvantaged Students, Johns Hopkins University, 1989).
8. Jeannie Oakes, Multiplying Inequalities: The Effects of Race, Social Class, and Tracking on Opportunities to Learn Math and Science (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, 1990). Slavin also suggests that there is evidence that teacher perceptions with regard to class homogeneity closely correspond to information provided by school administrators. See Robert E. Slavin et al., Alternatives to Ability Grouping (Baltimore: Center for Research on Effective Schooling for Disadvantaged Students, Johns Hopkins University, 1989).
9. See Janet E. Rosenbaum, "Track Misperceptions and Frustrated College Plans: An Analysis of the Effects of Tracks and Track Perceptions in the National Longitudinal Survey," Sociology of Education, April 1980, pp. 74-88.
10. "Meta-analysis" takes numerous forms and rests on a set of underlying assumptions that are often not met. Some of the weaknesses of the approach are pointed out in Eric A. Hanushek, "Money Might Matter Somewhere: A Response to Hedges, Laine, and Greenwald," Educational Researcher, May 1994, pp. 5-8.
11. Slavin cites Charles S. Reichardt, "The Statistical Analysis of Data from Nonequivalent Group Designs," in Thomas C. Cook and Donald T. Campbell, eds., Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1979), pp. 147-205, as the basis for the view that when the range of a covariate is large it is an inadequate control. Campbell's original work is in Donald T. Campbell, "Reforms as Experiments," American Psychologist, April 1969, pp. 409-29; and Donald T. Campbell and Albert Erlenbacher, "How Regression Artifacts in Quasi-Experimental Evaluations Can Mistakenly Make Compensatory Education Look Harmful," in Jerome Hellmuth, ed., Compensatory Education: A National Debate, vol. 3 (New York: Bruner/Mazel, 1970), pp. 185-210.
12. Slavin cites Charles S. Reichardt, "The Statistical Analysis of Data from Nonequivalent Group Designs," in Thomas C. Cook and Donald T. Campbell, eds., Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1979), pp. 147-205, as the basis for the view that when the range of a covariate is large it is an inadequate control. Campbell's original work is in Donald T. Campbell, "Reforms as Experiments," American Psychologist, April 1969, pp. 409-29; and Donald T. Campbell and Albert Erlenbacher, "How Regression Artifacts in Quasi-Experimental Evaluations Can Mistakenly Make Compensatory Education Look Harmful," in Jerome Hellmuth, ed., Compensatory Education: A National Debate, vol. 3 (New York: Bruner/Mazel, 1970), pp. 185-210.
13. Slavin cites Charles S. Reichardt, "The Statistical Analysis of Data from Nonequivalent Group Designs," in Thomas C. Cook and Donald T. Campbell, eds., Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1979), pp. 147-205, as the basis for the view that when the range of a covariate is large it is an inadequate control. Campbell's original work is in Donald T. Campbell, "Reforms as Experiments," American Psychologist, April 1969, pp. 409-29; and Donald T. Campbell and Albert Erlenbacher, "How Regression Artifacts in Quasi-Experimental Evaluations Can Mistakenly Make Compensatory Education Look Harmful," in Jerome Hellmuth, ed., Compensatory Education: A National Debate, vol. 3 (New York: Bruner/Mazel, 1970), pp. 185-210.
14. The argument concerning the range of control variables is shown to be incorrect in Burt S. Barnow, Glen C. Cain, and Arthur S. Goldberger, "Issues in the Analysis of Selectivity Bias," Evaluation Studies Review, vol. 5, 1980, pp. 41-49. See also Hoffer, p. 208.
15. This is true algebraically and statistically. One can estimate either a model in which the 10th-grade test score is regressed on a set of covariates and the eighth-grade test score or one in which the gain score (difference between 10th- and eighth-grade scores) is regressed on the same covariates and the eighth-grade score. The estimated coefficients of the covariates are identical whether the 10th-grade or gain scores are used as dependent variables.
16. Robert E. Slavin, "Achievement Effects of Ability Grouping in Secondary Schools: A Best-Evidence Synthesis," Review of Educational Research, vol. 60, 1990, pp. 471-99.
17. This point is also made by Hoffer: "Experimental studies of the effects of grouping restrict the 'treatment' to a narrow range of its real manifestations and thus negate the differential effects found in the observational studies" (p. 209).
18. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).