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

The 1994 reauthorization of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) introduced significant changes in the structure of federal support for educational research, development, and statistics - such as the mandate to create five large research institutes, to establish a policy board, and to expand the number of field-initiated grants. Now, after more than 3 1/2 years of experience with these changes, it is time to assess the results of this new approach - especially since OERI is slated to be reauthorized in less than 2 years.

Rather than look only at the most recent developments at OERI, this essay will try to provide a broad chronological re-examination of federal strategies for supporting educational research, development, and statistics. By placing the recent restructuring of OERI within a longer historical context, it will be possible to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the current reorganization as well as to discover what insights and guidance past experiences might provide for the upcoming reauthorization. Given the limitations of time and energy, the discussion will concentrate on the period after 1960 and focus heavily on the experiences of the National Institute for Education (NIE) and OERI. The time period covered by this analysis ends in 1997. Whenever possible, however, research and development activities at other federal agencies will be mentioned in order to place the results of this analysis in a more appropriate context.

[Foreword]

[I. Federal Educational Research and Statistics Before World War II]