Giving Compass' Take:

• Saro Mohammed argues that alternative evaluation designs are needed to evaluate education interventions because standard randomized control trials are not desirable or feasible. 

• What model best accommodate the unique needs of education evaluations? how can philanthropy help develop, standardize, and implement such evaluations? 

• Learn why randomized control trials are important for policy decisions.

The randomized control trial (RCT) is the best tool education researchers have for understanding cause and effect, but there are times - like in blended learning settings - when this research design is undesirable, infeasible, or both. As I have previously noted, innovative instructional models like blended learning require the building of an evidence base that can inform practice.

The good news is that there are approaches (research designs, methods, and techniques) that can be used to address some of the most common limitations of RCTs. These emerging approaches should and are more frequently being used by researchers working with practitioners to build a meaningful evidence base.

RCTs are a rigorous, inflexible research design that allows us to minimize bias and maximize control over what is driving any changes in outcomes that we observe in the study. One of the biggest limitations of this design to practitioners is the randomly assigned, untreated, comparison group - in many cases schools and districts are unwilling or unable to randomly assign students to receive or not receive an intervention, or even to “withhold” the intervention from a group of students at all.

The regression discontinuity design (RDD) is an old, but traditionally unused, design that eliminates the need for a random comparison group - replacing it instead with a treatment group comprising students who have a demonstrated need for the intervention, and a comparison group of students who have demonstrated that they have no such need.

Read the full article about going beyond randomized control trials by Saro Mohammed at The Learning Accelerator.