What Works Clearinghouse
Rebecca Herman - Principal Research Analyst
The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) was established in 2002 to provide educators, policymakers, and researchers with a central place they can go to for high-quality scientific research about successful programs and practices. Few resources have been available to compare the quality of competing research findings and promotional claims.
The clearinghouse has developed and set rigorous standards for examining and synthesizing research on the effectiveness of educational programs, products, practices, and policies.
Technical guidance in setting standards is provided by the Technical Advisory Group (TAG), composed of leading experts in research design, program evaluation, and research synthesis, both within and outside the field of education. Dr. Larry Hedges, University of Chicago, the chair of the advisory group, says, “For the first time, researchers and the education community as a whole have at their disposal a set of highly scientific and credible research review tools that can begin to answer the critical question: What works in American education?”
Dr. Rebecca Herman, a Principal Research Analyst at AIR, leads AIR’s work on the clearinghouse, which is a joint venture with the Campbell Collaboration. Rebecca and a team of AIR experts work closely with the U.S. Education Department’s Institute of Education Sciences, which administers the clearinghouse, in identifying the best educational approaches and providing access to up-to-date information about the latest trends and proven programs.
The clearinghouse is currently conducting systematic reviews and will produce reports on the following topics:
- Interventions for Increasing Adult Literacy
- Character Education Interventions: Benefits for Character Traits, Behavioral, and Academic Outcomes
- Interventions to Reduce Delinquent, Disorderly, and Violent Behavior in Middle and High School
- Interventions for Preventing High School Dropouts
- Interventions for Elementary School English Language Learners: Increasing English Language Acquisition and Academic Achievement
- Curriculum-Based Interventions for Increasing K–12 Math Achievement
- Peer-Assisted Learning Interventions in Elementary Schools: Reading, Mathematics, and Science Gains
- Interventions for Beginning Reading
For each topic, the clearinghouse produces three types of reports: study, intervention, and topic. Study reports describe the strengths and weaknesses of an individual study according to the WWC review and research findings. There are two forms of the study report for each study: a brief, nontechnical version and a detailed, more technical version. Intervention reports summarize the strength of the evidence for all studies reviewed on a particular intervention and, when there are enough studies on an intervention, provide a meta-analysis of the findings. Topic reports summarize findings on all studies on all relevant interventions for a particular topic.
Reviews of the evidence and WWC reports are available on the Web site (www.whatworks.ed.gov).