"What Works" Rates Programs' Effectiveness

From Education Week:

The U.S. Department of Education, in a bid to make its $15 million What Works Clearinghouse Web site more useful to policymakers and practitioners, quietly unveiled a new face for the site this month.

The What Works project is aimed at vetting research on educational interventions and programs so that decisionmakers can make informed choices about "what works" -- or is likely to work -- in their own schools.

The initial reports mostly gauged whether individual studies met the clearinghouse's tough evidence standards. So few studies passed muster, though, that clearinghouse operators worried that practitioners would get discouraged from using it.

The revamped Web site includes new "intervention reports" that contain program descriptions, information on costs to implement the program, and simple ratings on program effectiveness in specific areas.

Read more of the Education Week article.

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