eSchool News online, Corey Murray, February 16, 2004

The scientifically based research (SBR) requirement of the US No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is slowly changing the way schools approach new learning solutions. It’s also changing the way companies market their products to educators. But while everyone agrees the provision’s intentions are good, the law has created a host of new problems its authors never anticipated.

At its best, the provision’s staunchest supporters contend, SBR will lead to a paradigm shift in education, where a research-based approach to learning eventually will elicit a level of accountability equaled only in the medical field. At its worst, critics say, the law offers too little guidance and asks students to play the role of guinea pigs in a disruptive chain of control-based research experiments that would serve only to reinforce the line between the haves and the have-nots in the nation’s schools.

In short, the law specifies that all federally funded education initiatives deployed in grades three to eight must be proven effective by way of “scientifically based research.” So if a school district uses federal grant money to purchase reading software, for example, the software in question must be proven to work through rigorous analysis. The same holds true for math and science software, and so on.

But what, exactly, constitutes rigorous analysis?