Failures in Learning and Failures in Teaching
1 Harvard Medical School, Boston
Professor Rutter's remarkable study, reported elsewhere in this issue (p 208), of the impact of secondary schools on behavior and attainment is an extraordinary accomplishment, one with major implications for pediatric practice.
The design, execution, and analysis of the study required some nine years of sustained effort. I will forego comment on what is apparent to any reader familiar with the literature on the measurement of behavior; namely, that conceptual elegance and methodologic rigor are required for the construction of behavioral measures sensitive to both process and outcome. What may be less obvious is the "politics" of a school-based study.




