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

Changing Federal Strategies for Supporting Educational Research, Development, and Statistics - September 1998

VI. Changes During the Bush Administration

While OERI continued to be plagued by some of the same problems that had always faced the agency, there were a few promising signs of improvement during the Bush Administration. Under the direction first of Christopher Cross and then of Diane Ravitch, OERI regained much of its former funding and even enhanced its intellectual reputation. Yet many observers, including some key congressional members, continued to see OERI as a troubled and crippled institution.

The leadership of OERI in the Bush Administration presents a mixed picture. During part of these years OERI was managed by two very distinguished and able individuals?Cross and Ravitch. On the other hand, the thwarted attempt to appoint Patricia Hines, who was widely portrayed as a partisan, unqualified conservative activist, raised fear and hostility among many researchers and members of Congress. Perhaps most disturbing of all, there were five changes in OERI leadership within that 4-year period.

The overall funding of OERI improved considerably during the Bush Administration and reversed the dramatic funding decreases of the early 1980s. Excluding the programs for libraries, OERI funding rose from $78.2 million in FY 1989 to $286.2 million in FY 1993?an astounding 266 percent increase. Even taking into consideration changes in the value of the dollar, funding for OERI rose by 214 percent. Indeed, in real dollars the overall OERI budget was the highest since FY 1973.⁽⁹¹⁾

Most of the rapid increase in OERI's budget, however, was not in the research or statistics accounts, but in the transferred or newly mandated programs designed to improve education. For example, the Javits Gifted and Talented Program, the Blue Ribbon Schools, and the Eisenhower Math and Science Program were added in FY 1989; Mid-Career Teacher Training and Educational Partnerships were acquired in FY 1990; and the Evaluation of Education Reform, the National Literacy Institute, and the Summit were added in FY 1991.

The gradual and often unnoticed addition of these new programs in the late 1980s and early 1990s fundamentally altered the overall mix of OERI activities?though many observers and even some staff have not always appreciated the full impact of this major change. In FY 1989 funding for NCES, the labs and centers, field-initiated research, and ERIC comprised 98.7 percent of the overall OERI budget with less than $1 million for other activities. But by FY 1993 funding for these more traditional OERI activities was only 52.8 percent of the overall budget ($135.0 million was allocated for the new programs). Thus, at the same time that the fiscal importance of OERI as an agency increased substantially during the Bush Administration, the relative amount of monies devoted to NCES, labs, centers, ERIC, or field-initiated studies dropped sharply.

Within the more traditional OERI funding categories, NCES increased its budget the most. The NCES budget rose from $31.1 million in FY 1989 to $78.9 million in FY 1993. Moreover, combined with the sizable increases for statistics in FY 1987 and FY 1988 the statistical components of OERI were expanded substantially. In real dollars, more monies were spent on the collection, preparation, analysis, and dissemination of statistical information than ever before. On the other hand, ERIC and field-initiated research saw only a modest gain in expenditures with the latter continuing to be an almost invisible and minuscule part of OERI activities.

Funding for the labs and centers increased substantially during the Bush Administration. Funding for labs rose from $22.1 million in FY 1989 to $36.5 million in FY 1993 - a surprisingly large increase of 65.2 percent; similarly, funding for centers rose from $17.8 million in FY 1989 to $27.7 million in FY 1993 - a slightly lower, but significant increase of 55.6 percent.⁽⁹²⁾ Most of the increase in center and lab funding was due to congressional pressure and earmarking of additional monies - especially a sizable $4 - $6 million annual rural education initiative designated solely for the labs.

Although the overall OERI policy toward the labs and centers did not change much during the Bush Administration, the number of centers expanded while the average size of each decreased. This change had began under Assistant Secretary Finn and reflected his strong and influential views of the differential value of those institutions:

• In terms of our investments in the labs and centers themselves, the news is mixed. The labs, I believe, have not been a reliably remunerative investment. Their impact - while admittedly difficult to assess?is practically invisible. For decades, the labs were shielded from competition by Congress; this has further diluted the value of the taxpayer's investment in them. Finally, these institutions simply cannot provide services to more than a few districts in our immense education system. That we spend about half of OERI's research and development funds on them is, then, almost by definition, a poor investment.

• Our investment in centers has been more fruitful. Though their impact is also difficult to gauge, they do a different kind of work than the labs.... While some centers do little work of conspicuous value, others are solid and productive. But the current arrangement of a limited number of relatively large centers?which we inherited from NIE?still has the effect of confining the number of topics we research and the approaches we can take to the study of each topic.⁽⁹³⁾

Following up on his call for more centers, Finn established several minicenters. Each of these minicenters was funded at an annual rate of about $500,000. However, he was unable to persuade Congress to change the structure of the labs. Finn did appoint a panel to evaluate the lab system, but left office before it completed its work. That panel reaffirmed the regionality of the labs, but also called for a more national focus as well as more concern about the diminution of practitioner-oriented research at those institutions.⁽⁹⁴⁾

Cross continued the basic policies of his immediate predecessors in regard to the centers and labs, but expanded the number of centers funded in the 1990 competition. With 14 of the existing center contracts expiring in 1989, the Office of Research (OR) in OERI planned to establish 12 new ones, but looked at another 7 for possible consideration. Many of the OERI career staff favored a smaller number of centers, which would be funded at a higher level. But Cross recommended that 18 new centers be funded?thus making a total of 25 centers supported by OERI.⁽⁹⁵⁾

Cross, who had chaired the earlier panel to look at the labs, presided over the successful lab competition of 1990. Under pressure from Congress, the number of labs were expanded from 9 to 10; although there were some modest changes in the orientation of the labs, the overall system remained very similar in its basic outlines set forth in the 1985 guidelines. Recognizing the interest of the Congress in dissemination, Cross emphasized the role of dissemination for both the labs and centers.

When Diane Ravitch began her term as head of OERI, she was not especially familiar with the work of the labs and centers, but had heard from several sources that it was not of uniformly high quality or value.⁽⁹⁶⁾ She appointed Maris Vinovskis, a scholar from the University of Michigan, as her Research Advisor and assigned him the task of assessing the quality of work of the labs and centers. Vinovskis found that much of the work of the centers and labs was fragmented and uncoordinated and that the percentage of monies actually spent on research and development at those institutions was surprisingly modest (with a large portion of their budget spent on overhead, administrative costs, and dissemination). Moreover, he found the quality of the research produced by the labs and centers was quite uneven and needed considerable improvement.⁽⁹⁷⁾

NAS had been commissioned to reexamine the role of the federal government in educational research and development with particular focus on OERI. The NAS Panel issued their influential recommendations in 1992. It called for the reorganization of OERI's research efforts into three, four, or five R&D directorates. "Each directorate would coordinate R&D centers, field-initiated research programs, special studies, and linkages with the Reform Assistance Division."⁽⁹⁸⁾

The NAS Panel recommended keeping the centers, but suggested that they should be modified:

• The committee recommends several changes to expand their contributions in the future. First, the centers should undertake considerable (sic) more basic research than they currently do. Second, the centers should engage in more sustained efforts of applied research, development, and demonstration, aimed at nurturing new methods, approaches, and tools to full maturity. Such efforts require long-term institutional support. Third, innovative methods, programs, and processes developed by the centers should be subject to a quality assurance process before wide-scale distribution.⁽⁹⁹⁾

The Panel also criticized the insufficient funding of the new OERI centers:

• Most of the centers now receive less than $1 million in annual support from OERI. The committee cannot imagine a robust R&D center operating at much less than $3 million annual in core funding. Without that level of support, there will not be a critical mass, diversity of expertise, and scale of operation that are needed to tackle the difficult research problems and development efforts that confront the nation's schools. Some of the proposed R&D directories in OERI might have only one large center. Others would have several. A center might engage in both research and development or might focus exclusively on one or the other.⁽¹⁰⁰⁾

Compared with critics of the labs, such as Finn, the NAS Panel was much more positive about the current and future contributions of these institutions. They recommended the continuation of the labs, but did suggest ways to make them more effective agents for stimulating and sustaining educational reforms:

• OERI's regionally governed laboratories should be administered by the Reform Assistance Directorate and converted to Reform Assistance Laboratories (RALs) with liaison and assistance staff assigned to each state in their respective regions....

• The laboratories are in a good position, with some modifications, to facilitate school reform.... The committee foresees at least five modes of operation by which the RALs would foster education reform and the creation of self-sustained learning communities. First, RALs would conduct a wide range of activities: applied research, development, demonstrations, evaluations, dissemination, state policy assistance, and technical assistance for the purpose of facilitating school reform. As with the centers, the RALs' innovative methods, programs, and processes should be subject to a quality assurance review.... Second, the RALs would assign a few liaison and assistance staff to each state in their respective regions.... Third, the RALs would scout for exemplary practices developed in the field by teachers and administrators and help them in further refinements, evaluations, and preparation of applicants for Program Effectiveness Panel (PEP) certification. Fourth, the RALs would provide short- and intermediate-term technical assistance to districts and schools through various means, including personal visits by RAL staff, training or trainers, telephone assistance, and mailed materials.... Fifth, the RALs would conduct long-term assistance at a few sites, with a RAL staff member, backed by the full RAL, spending 1 year or more providing intensive technical assistance.⁽¹⁰¹⁾

The NAS Committee also made other suggestions about these institutions, including a controversial recommendation questioning the necessity or advisability of open competitions for labs and centers every 5 years.⁽¹⁰²⁾

During the lengthy reauthorization process in the early 1990s, Representative Major Owens (Democrat-New York) held extensive hearings on the agency and expressed disappointment with the past and current achievements of OERI. He frequently complained that one of the primary obstacles to the provision of adequate research and development was the highly politicized nature of the agency.⁽¹⁰³⁾ Most observers agreed that NIE/OERI had become more involved in political controversies in the early 1980s, but differed amongst themselves interpreting the situation in OERI in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For example, when Ravitch challenged Owens to produce a single recent example of politicization at one of his hearings in 1992, Owens failed to respond.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾

Owens also expressed strong dissatisfaction with the existing Johns Hopkins Center on Effective Schooling for Disadvantaged Students and called for the creation of another, larger institution which would address many of the same topics and issues.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ The attack on the Johns Hopkins Center was surprising since the review of the R&D centers by Vinovskis found it to be one of the more productive and accomplished institutions he visited.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ Arthur Wise, Chair of the AERA Government Professional Liaison Committee, went even further and called for a more comprehensive and ambitious reorganization of OERI. Wise recommended the creation of several large national research institutes of education modeled on the National Institutes of Health.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ Reinforced by the NAS recommendations in 1992, the idea of four or five large national research institutes gradually became accepted by everyone and was eventually incorporated into the reauthorization legislation of both the House and Senate.

The reauthorization legislation failed to gain quick passage, however, because of fundamental differences between the House and Senate over the creation of an OERI policy board. Although both chambers called for creating a board, the Senate version would have made the board more of an advisory body than the House bill. Moreover, the House version specified that the 20-person OERI policy board had to be selected from nominations from a few designated research and educational groups?a provision vehemently opposed by the Bush Administration, the Senate, and even the Republican members of the House Committee.⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ Although Representative Owens, the chief architect of the policy board, ultimately in the closing days of the 102nd Congress was willing to compromise, it was too late and the legislation died without action.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾

With the election of President Bill Clinton, Ravitch resigned in January 1993. As she left office after 18 months, she singled out OERI's accomplishments in helping to launch the national standards projects, developing and publishing the popular "Helping Your Child..." series, and starting to create SMARTLINE (an interactive, computer-based network for disseminating information to teachers and parents). Ravitch also provided an interesting and important reversal of what she now regarded as the major problems facing OERI:

• When I came to OERI, I thought, like so many others, that the biggest problem in the agency was a need for more and better dissemination. I no longer believe that. There are two big problems, and they are pretty basic:

• Problem number one: OERI has never had the appropriations to support a good research program; a report from the National Academy of Sciences noted that federal funding for education research has declined by 88 percent in constant dollars over the past 20 years. It recommended an increase of $267 million each year for five years, in contrast to current funding in OERI of some $58 million.

• Problem number two: The agency does not have enough first-rate researchers inside the agency. There is presently a small cadre of able researchers in OERI, but their numbers are too few, and many are burdened with administrative duties. This has had a deleterious impact on OERI's ability to carry out its research mission.

• The OERI research team should analyze, synthesize, and explain education research to practitioners and the public. The research staff should integrate the data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics?including student assessments and longitudinal studies - with the studies generated by the national research centers, regional laboratories, and independent scholars. But these important expectations are currently beyond reach because of the small number of researchers on OERI's staff. Strengthening dissemination without strengthening the agency's internal capacity to gather and synthesize research findings would be a futile exercise.⁽¹¹⁰⁾

Unfortunately, the recognition that the lack of distinguished scholars has seriously stifled the functioning of OERI came just as Ravitch left office and too late for her to remedy this major shortcoming within the agency.

[V. The Reagan Administration and the Challenge to. . . ]

[VII. The "New" OERI]