Project Follow Through - Planned Variation

Planned Variation

In typical scientific experiments, treatment and control groups are selected through random assignment. Because Follow Through was an experiment designed to evaluate the efficacy of a number of interventions in local districts, districts chose the interventions they wanted implemented in their schools. This method of selecting a desired intervention among several candidates is called planned variation One publication refers to it as “random innovation” (Rhine, 1981, p. 292). Actually, there is nothing random about it. Planned variation was thought to be advantageous over random assignment because it gave local communities (e.g. community members, parents, administrators, and teachers) an element of local control over the implementation of their program (Elmore, 1977, pp. 187, 190; Rivlin, et al., 1975). In fact, Hill (1981) believed that programs like Follow Through “can be…permanent sources of advocacy pressure on behalf of the goals and beneficiaries of federal programs” (p. 7).