A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
POLICY AND PRIORITIES BOARD

Minutes of Meeting
March 19 and 20, 1998

March 19, 1998

Location
Room 100
80 F St., NW
Washington, DC 20208-7564

Members Present
Kenji Hakuta, Chair
Jomills H. Braddock, II
James E. Bottoms
Ann Clark
Edmund Gordon
Sharon L. Kagan
Glenda Lappan
Robert W. Marley
Joyce Muhlestein
Claire Pelton

Members Absent
Patricia Ann Baltz
John Bruer
Alba Ortiz

Ex Officio Members Present
Ricky T. Takai, Office of Educational Research and Improvement
Margaret Cozzens, National Science Foundation
Douglas Herbert, National Endowment for the Arts
James Herbert, National Endowment for the Humanities
Joanne S. Morris, Office of Indian Education Programs

Designated Federal Official
Thelma Leenhouts

Board Staff Present
Eve M. Bither
Mary Grace Lucier

OERI Staff Present
Margo Anderson
Sue Betka
Cynthia Dorfman
Jim Fox
Barbara Greenberg
Sue Gruskin
Peirce Hammond
Sharon Horne
Harold Himmelfarb
Sue Klein
Carol Lacampagne
Luna Levinson
Oliver Moles
Nevzer Stacy
Robert Stonehill
Joe Teresa

Department of Education Staff Present
Scott Fleming, OCLA
Candace Bertotti, OCF&CIO

Members of the Public Present
Emerson Elliott
James Greeno
Debbie Leong-Childs
Mike Kane
Bill Morrill

Chairman Kenji Hakuta called the meeting to order at 9 am. The Designated Federal Official, Thelma Leenhouts, confirmed the presence of a quorum. The chair announced that three members of the Board who were initially appointed [in 1995] to three-year terms had been reappointed to full terms of six years by Secretary Riley. The members are Claire Pelton, Glenda Lappan, and Kenji Hakuta.

Report of the Acting Assistant Secretary
Mr. Takai indicated that the revised draft of the guidance for interim and final reviews of the R&D centers, which was submitted to the Board, would be the final draft. The law permits OERI to extend the center grants for another five years or to recompete. The Institutes and the Assistant Secretary are beginning discussions about that decision.

The Board was asked to give guidance on what criteria might be used for competitive or non-competitive renewal, what process would coordinate with the developing priorities. The Board was given the final draft of the Phase III standards and thanked for its leadership in framing them, and briefed on the startup of the interagency research initiative.

Schools for the New Millennium
Mr. James Herbert described this project from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which addresses three important issues in American education:

  • The need to prepare teachers in high school and middle school to use resources that are increasingly available on the world wide web and other information technologies;

  • The whole-school movement in educational reform;

  • Use of the extended year for professional development.

    He also described the dissemination and evaluation plans for the project. NEH has begun other initiatives with respect to digital technologies, the development of humanities web sites and a quality review by peer panels of 6000 existing web sites.

    RD&D Committee
    Emerson Elliott guided the discussion with Bill Morrill and Mike Kane from American Institutes for Research of major findings and implications of four papers prepared under contract with the Board: The Needs, Demand For, and Supply of Educational Research, Development and Dissemination; Comparison of Selected Federal RD&D Styles; and A Review of the Federal Role and the Department of Education Structure.

    Morrill’s conclusions were that the RD&D enterprise is underinvested, fragmented, maldistributed between basic research and applied, and between R&D and dissemination, and not visibly enough based on science. Further, the distributions between the Department of Education and the foundations are not sufficiently complementary. Nevertheless, there are present windows of opportunity to improve the situation.

    Further discussion elicited guidance from the Board on the preparation of a draft report on the education RD&D system that will be submitted to the Board in June. Also addressed were the implications of the report on the timelines for the decision to renew/recompete the grants to the R&D centers; the reauthorization of OERI; and the budget for FY2000. The chair suggested that the co-chairs of the RD&D Committee might wish to refine further the committee’s directions to the author.

    The luncheon speaker was the Acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of Legislative and Congressional Affairs, Scott Fleming.

    Program Committee
    Committee chair Ann Clark introduced Jim Greeno (principal investigator) and Debbie Leong-Childs (executive director) from the National Academy of Education (NAE) to discuss their contract with the Board. NAE will convene over the next year three panels of experts to review the Board’s research priorities and to recommend the most significant research questions on the topic of closing the achievement gap that persists among the nation’s students.

    For the record, Edmund Gordon and Kenji Hakuta noted that they were members of the NAE.

    The panels will address the following topics:

  • Critical Transitions and the Curricula and Assessment Practices that Support Them;

  • Professional Development and Teacher Communities

  • Strengthening the Capacity of Research to Contribute to Educational Practice and Public Policy.

    The panel chairs will also consult with individuals and focus groups from the field of practice about their report, and confer on a regular basis with the Board.

    After a short break, Committee Chair Ann Clark made reference to the Board workshop on Race, Gender, Class, and Student Achievement, which was held on March 6. The final written report of that event had not yet been received by the Board, but members who had attended offered comments on its helpfulness and utility in trying to deconstruct the interactions between these identifying factors and in creating new definitions. Dr. Gordon reported that the Rockefeller Foundation had expressed interest in reconvening the group to build upon its discussions.

    The chair adjourned the meeting at 4:35 pm.

    Up March 20