But LMB is a good remedial reading program

The following was my response to North County Times blogger, Lucki, who teaches LMB and insists it is a good program.
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I am sure you are a fine teacher. LMB is also a fine program. It can be useful to help underachieving students.

BUT

When the folks who have the most to benefit from good results are the ones picking the students to be "helped" and the ones who compile the data, we should look with suspicion on the data.

Even very honest people will have an unconscious bias that will push results in their favor. There are terms for this observer bias, selection bias, allocation bias, the Hawthorne effect aka study effect and the re-interpretation effect. All of these biases and effects happen without any intent, but they do happen.

For the LMB results to be unbiased and valid, there must be control of observer, selection and allocation bias at the very least.