Federal and state agencies should prioritize the use of evidence-based programs and promote the rigorous evaluation of prevention and promotion programs in a variety of settings in order to increase the knowledge base of what works, for whom, and under what conditions. (Boat & Warner, 2009, p. 371).
That is, educational research and social inquiry are to be approached in systematic experiential trials (often with the so-called “gold standard” of Randomized Controlled Trials, or RCT) that create the foundational for universality and generalizability. There has long been a push to assert RCT or the “gold standard” in research as the pièce de résistance in educational research as the most ideal setting as it represents “random assignment” to the treatment or control group and eliminates selection bias (Mosteller & Boruch, 2002).
For example, in the quest to determine whether school choice models such as vouchers “work,” researchers (largely funded and supported by ideological organizations such as EdChoice and the University of Arkansas— a point we take up below) have increasingly proposed the use of RCTs to compare variance of outcomes among students receiving the school choice treatment and those remaining in public schools (Abdulkadiroglu, Pathak, & Walters, 2015; Barnard, Frangakis, Hill, & Rubin, 2003; Bitler, Domina, Penner, & Hoynes, 2015; Chingos & Peterson, 2015; Cowen, 2008; EdChoice, 2017; Greene, 2001; Greene, Peterson, & Du, 1998; Howell & Peterson, 2002/2006; Jin, Barnard, & Rubin, 2010; Krueger & Zhu, 2004; Mills & Wolf, 2016; Rouse, 1998; Wolf et al., 2013). Though, despite the glaring possibility of bias developing as pro-charter organizations like EdChoice (formerly the Friedman Foundation) and the University of Arkansas (heavily funded over the years by the Walton Family Foundation) promoting such research, there remains a considerable level of skepticism surrounding the unwavering power of RCTs in educational research (Lubienski & Brewer, 2016) and the elevation of quantitative over qualitative methods in general (Berliner, 2002).
In the age of hyper-accountability and assessment, policy makers have increasingly linked funding to the results of evaluations. Given the rampant existence of the “Protestant Work Ethic” dispositions outlined by Max Weber (1930) that has informed the myth of meritocracy, it has become commonsensical in our rhetoric and practice that one should be held accountable for the practices and monies to which they have been made responsible. In education this is manifested as students being held accountable for their grades, teachers for the production of good and better grades, administrators for the reduction in documented discipline problems, and school districts being expected to do more despite having less money. And if everyone is to be held accountable, everyone must be evaluated by test scores. In turn, these various outcomes serve as a guiding example— or exemplars— of “best practices,” or to the contrary, become negative examples. This myopic quest for certainty can be seen in school choice research that seek to ignore contextual factors in favor of generalizability across contexts.
Yet, while statistical inquiry can provide legitimate insight into some social phenomena, it stands little chance of drowning out the realities of contextual factors that are, to be sure, the most important factors in the development of lived realities and shared understandings.
The practical consequences of scientism in education are that it will institute a notion of the curriculum as “cookbook,” teaching and learning as “proven method” or “best practices,” research as “funded enterprise,” and educational inquiry as only “what works” (Baez & Boyles, 2009, pp. 51-52).
In sum, the quest for a-contextual certainty lies social inquiry that not only acknowledges context but also understands its powerful force in shaping outcomes. Given the political foundations and rationales of school choice, there remains an insatiable requirement to conduct experimental and non-experimental research that justifies school choice expansion. The expansion effort has required significant levels of funding to create a body of quantitative research and an appearance of a predominance of objective observation.
