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Politicians call loudly for educational improvement, and many insist that more testing and more accountability will usher in an era of improved student achievement. Why is it that experiments have been used infrequently in education research?

UW-Madison education professor Geoffrey Borman points out that the work of classroom teachers is not usually driven by scientific knowledge of the efficacy of their practices. Instead, it tends to be reinforced by psychic rewards that teachers feel when they reach their students. And in a larger context, schooling occurs within a complex system including federal policies, state mandates, district policies, and school-level leadership. How can one improve, or even study, such a complicated system through the relatively simple causal connections suggested by experimental designs?

If randomization is to be more widely accepted and implemented in education, Borman offers these suggestions:

1. The ethical and political dilemma of withholding services must be addressed.
2. Randomized field trials must be adapted to fit the messy and complex world of schools and classrooms.
3. A stronger centralized federal role is needed to foster and sustain experimentation and improvement of educational practices.