Randomized Trials in Mathematics Education: Recalibrating the Proposed High Watermark

The author reviews the recommendations in Foundations for Success: The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008) and agrees that a rebalancing of mathematics education research is timely and necessary, but questions whether randomized trials of small experimental studies and large field studies, without a clearer framing of the needed continuum of studies, can adequately rebalance the portfolio and address the Panel’s “what works” questions. He offers one listing of the possible phases of research required to support high-quality causal inference in mathematics education as a way to foster continued debate about the ease of moving a model of research that works in one domain (drug trials) into the forced service of another intellectual domain (education).