Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have oversimplified complex Indian education realities, researchers argue. This approach treats classrooms like labs and education as a product, potentially harming public school systems, according to Anurag Shukla, director at Brhat, a public policy think tank. Shukla’s analysis, published recently, criticizes the dominance of RCTs in shaping education policy.
RCTs Narrow Focus, Ignore Context
The widespread adoption of RCTs in Indian education has led to a focus on measurable outcomes. This method prioritizes quantifiable data over understanding the deeper social and contextual factors influencing learning. Shukla notes that complex issues like language, identity, and the role of teachers in communities are often overlooked.
RCTs train evaluators to see what is measurable as what is real. This simplification is a core problem. It overlooks the fact that schools are not externally funded programs. Classrooms are not laboratory settings.
Evidence Brokers and Market Incentives
A new professional class of ‘evidence brokers’ has emerged. They facilitate RCTs, driven by donor demands for attribution and government needs for quick results. Academic careers also benefit from publishable RCT findings. This creates an ecosystem where RCTs provide a seemingly certain numerical outcome.
Effect sizes derived from RCTs have begun to substitute for genuine understanding. Fundamental educational mechanisms are relegated to footnotes. The political dimensions of schooling are dismissed as background noise.
Education as a Product Category
The reliance on RCTs has transformed education into a product category. Interventions are designed to be discrete, measurable, and delivered within short project cycles. Examples include tablets, apps, workbooks, and scripted pedagogy. These are easily trialed.
However, essential elements of education, like long-term teacher development and curriculum coherence, are difficult to test with RCTs. These crucial aspects are often neglected.
The ‘External Validity Trap’
A significant danger arises when interventions proven in one context are scaled without considering local conditions. Shukla highlights the ‘external validity trap.’ An intervention that works in a controlled setting may fail when implemented through overburdened bureaucracies in different regions.
Indian education systems are high-friction environments. They face uneven capacity and contested authority. Scaling a successful local RCT requires more than just replication.
RCTs Miss ‘Black Box’ Issues
RCTs often treat educational programs as ‘black boxes.’ They overlook individual differences, incentives, and mechanisms that affect learning. The same intervention can impact students differently.
Heterogeneity is central to education. RCTs often simplify this complexity. Short evaluation windows, matching grant cycles, exacerbate this problem.
Schooling is Not Lab Science
Experiments provide causal claims under specific assumptions. These claims do not automatically transfer to different settings. Schooling is a dense social field. It involves language politics, local histories, and community-state relations.
Randomizing a teaching aid ignores deep-seated historical relationships. This is a critical limitation of the RCT approach in education.
Development Technocracy and Politics
The RCT regime often sidesteps complex governance issues. It focuses on manageable tweaks rather than necessary systemic rebuilding. This methodological choice carries political implications.
RCTs create a moral hierarchy where dissent is framed as anti-science. This approach flatters donors and promises neutrality. It ultimately helps grow the market for standardized interventions.
What RCTs Keep Missing
The most significant harm to Indian education has been the weakening of the public system’s authority. Teachers are treated as implementers. Curriculum is subordinated to test scores. Digital platforms dictate classroom life.
NGOs act as parallel delivery systems, fostering dependency. RCTs focusing on short-term gains ignore education’s long-term nature.
A Serious Alternative
A robust evaluation culture for Indian education needs a diagnostic approach, not a lab model. It should integrate theory with measurement.
A serious alternative would combine methods like experiments, longitudinal designs, and ethnography. It would value teacher knowledge and agency. It would refuse to convert education into a product certified by short-term gains.
The legacy of RCTs in Indian education has been a narrowing of questions and imagination. Their dominance has limited what the state feels permitted to do. The tragedy is not the existence of RCTs, but their accreditation as the sole path to legitimacy in a complex field.