The Case for Translational Research in Education

• In Event: To Know Is Not Enough: Commissioned Essay Writers—Sunday (Coffee)

Abstract

American public schools are a hotly contested topic in multiple arenas, as locally as the
family and as broadly as national policy. There has been long-standing, general consensus that
many public schools (though not all) are failing America’s children and producing a badly
educated citizenry. Children of color and children of the poor are disproportionately gathered in schools that are struggling the hardest, with the least amount of resources, against the greatest concentration of societal ills, over which they have the least control. So much has been written about the challenges to and failures of “urban”, “impoverished”, “rural”, “under-resourced” and otherwise coded schools over the past several decades that it is now fair to say that the problems of failing schools have been fully surveyed, catalogued, dissected, and analyzed. The picture of what is “wrong” emerges from across the disciplinary and political spectrum, from Jonathon Kozol to Bill Bennett. The National Education Association weighed in over 5 years ago on the need for “improving the quality of teaching, increasing student achievement and making schools safer, better places to learn” (NEA, 2006). Where has this tide of information taken us, and what
have we done with all those data?

Author

• Cynthia Hudley, University of California - Santa Barbara