Out of the ivory tower and into the field

While an essential and very important part of USC Rossier’s mission is to prepare the next generation of education practitioners, leaders and scholars, we do so much more. Unlike many other academic schools or departments, a school of education is also dedicated to applied work that responds to the pressing problems and issues of the times. By design, it engages faculty and students in research, teaching and service to promote the public good by protecting and improving our complex, rapidly changing democratic society.

Though not all schools of education exist in a research university, here at USC part of our mandate is to conduct research that seeks to ameliorate problems facing K–12 and higher education. As a professor on the tenure side of the house, I, along with my colleagues, do research with an explicit intent of improving policy, practice and equity. This work is often conducted in partnership with policymakers and leaders so that the insights can guide improvement on the ground. For example, the years of research I conducted with education faculty and students on policies calling for the use of data to inform practice helped advance new methods and frameworks that have pushed the field’s thinking about what is meant by data, how to facilitate more reflective responses to data and unintended consequences of data use for equity—notably, ways it can reify deficit perspectives. This scholarship has been used to revise national standards, develop tools to help teachers use data and inform leadership training and supports.

Collaborative research on democratic engagement and school finance reform has produced important frameworks and findings to better understand and improve reforms calling for greater local control and civic participation in educational decision-making and resource allocation, and has demonstrated the ways in which power imbalances, biases and racism often undermine reform goals. Research I conducted with colleagues in and outside of USC on New York City’s Schoolwide Performance Bonus Program—and its failure to improve student outcomes—contributed to the formal cancelation of the program and provided evidence that can help leaders in education think carefully about the motivational assumptions that underlie such incentive-based policies. A STEM study conducted with fellow USC Rossier faculty resulted in hands-on, standards-based curriculum and professional development materials that were made freely available to teachers nationally.

Another often-overlooked aspect of what schools of education do is service. Sure, there are the typical academic service activities to the university and field, like serving on university committees and reviewing or editing journals. But in a school of education, our faculty also collaborate with local schools and districts, and often sit on committees providing evidence-based guidance to leaders overseeing education systems at all levels. For instance, I and several other USC Rossier faculty members serve on the L.A. Unified School District Equity Initiative Research Advisory Board, and I am a faculty director of policy analysis for California Education, a nonpartisan research center co-run with Stanford University, UCLA, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Davis, to help inform state and local policy.

Could other organizations take on this research, training and service? Not likely. As university faculty, we have greater flexibility and incentives to pursue projects large and small, and to think about the next set of problems coming down the pike. It is part of our mission. Could other schools in a university take up this charge? No way. The blend of faculty with deep experience in education practice and research cannot be found elsewhere. So, do we still need schools of education? Absolutely.