Long-Awaited Study Shows ‘Success for All’ Gains

A rigorous study of 38 schools that are using the Success for All improvement program has found that students read better after two years in the program and outpace students in regular classrooms by up to half a school year.

But the long-awaited study, which was posted online last week, is as notable for its research design as it is for its results. Paid for with nearly $7 million in federal and private funds, the study heralds what federal education officials and other experts hope will be a new generation of large-scale experiments that use randomized research designs to give educators and policymakers clearer answers on what works in schools.

“I applaud them for doing that,” said Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, the director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, the federal agency that is spearheading the push for more “scientifically based” education studies. “It’s a sophisticated study that uses everything the evaluation field has come...