"All the students were assigned randomly! Much like in a randomized medical study this allows the establishment of a causal relationship."
Two thoughts...
1) Ethics: You put some children with dyslexia or with challenging behaviour with newly trained teachers with little experience? Did their parents have any say in this? Was there an ethics process? Was there support available for newly trained teachers meeting major needs in their randomly allocated classes? Amazing.
2) Correlation does not imply a causal relationship. You need a theory. Theory in this area is not positivist, it is fuzzier.
1) Same students, same teachers and same support in same schools but the assignment of students and teachers to classes was randomized. Consent was obtained from principals, teachers and parents.
2) Randomized experiments can establish causation if done properly. This is how medical treatments are evaluated. The theory is simple: teachers that were more effective in the past will be more effective in the future and using objective metrics (tests, classroom observation and surveys) we can measure teacher effectiveness. This certainly positivist but more important likely repeatable.
You seem like you are interested in this but I get the sense you already have strong views. Maybe you should put those aside for a moment and take a closer look at this new and interesting study you might learn something:
"You seem like you are interested in this but I get the sense you already have strong views."
I will read the reference, however, to those of us in Europe, please remember that this methodology resembles a group of earnest steam punks analysing flies in amber with brass and ebony microscopes on an ice floe that is breaking up... I'm suggesting that we suspect positivist descriptions do not capture the important values in education. 90% of what children learn is learned outside school I suggest.
I am prepared to be astounded with contrary evidence.
Two thoughts...
1) Ethics: You put some children with dyslexia or with challenging behaviour with newly trained teachers with little experience? Did their parents have any say in this? Was there an ethics process? Was there support available for newly trained teachers meeting major needs in their randomly allocated classes? Amazing.
2) Correlation does not imply a causal relationship. You need a theory. Theory in this area is not positivist, it is fuzzier.
As I said before, 'good luck with that'.