In general social policy is hard. Really hard. In part due to some of the things you talk about.
While the Gates Foundation did waste time and money on the small schools initiative, but in some ways I view it as a model for how social research should work.
They had a theory and some supporting data. They tried to implement a program to optimize it and measured the results. And while they may have been ruthless in driving this, they were equally ruthless with their measurement. They didn't hide their results. They came out and said, "we are disappointed with our results". http://www.gatesfoundation.org/speeches-commentary/Pages/bil...
If more social research was done in this way and was as transparent I suspect we'd make some better progress in education. But unfortunately, most people have taken sides -- the issue has been politicized. And so outside of groups like Gates, the data no longer matters.
While the Gates Foundation did waste time and money on the small schools initiative, but in some ways I view it as a model for how social research should work.
They had a theory and some supporting data. They tried to implement a program to optimize it and measured the results. And while they may have been ruthless in driving this, they were equally ruthless with their measurement. They didn't hide their results. They came out and said, "we are disappointed with our results". http://www.gatesfoundation.org/speeches-commentary/Pages/bil...
If more social research was done in this way and was as transparent I suspect we'd make some better progress in education. But unfortunately, most people have taken sides -- the issue has been politicized. And so outside of groups like Gates, the data no longer matters.