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

III. Educational Research and the Great Society

Overall, the 1960s were a prosperous period for both science and social science research.⁽²⁷⁾ Federal funding for science research rose from $1.9 billion in FY 1960 to $4.6 billion in FY 1969. Federal funds for social science research grew even more rapidly from $34.8 million in FY 1960 to $217.8 million in FY 1969.⁽²⁸⁾ And increasingly policy makers looked to the social sciences for assistance in coping with social problems such as eliminating poverty and preventing urban riots.⁽²⁹⁾

In the late 1950s and early 1960s the National Science Foundation (NSF) became increasingly involved in the development of classroom curricula. NSF's first effort in this area was the widely acclaimed high school Physical Sciences Study Committee (PSSC) Physics. The agency then funded a high school anthropology curriculum, Man: A Course of Study (MACOS), a curriculum which became extremely controversial in the early 1970s.⁽³⁰⁾

The quality of research in most of the other social sciences improved in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but work in education seemed to lag behind. Although some useful studies had been done, educational research was widely criticized as exploratory, technically unsophisticated, irrelevant to teachers and schools, and inaccessible to the public and policymakers.⁽³¹⁾

Small but important steps were taken in the early 1960s to expand and improve research and statistics at the Office of Education. Funding for the Cooperative Research Program reached $11.5 million in FY 1964.⁽³²⁾ And $5 million of from the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) was targeted for research on the educational uses of television, motion pictures, and printed materials.⁽³³⁾ Yet Professor Francis Chase, who had assessed the Office of Research in the 1950s, continued to be highly critical of the agency in the early 1960s.⁽³⁴⁾

Responding to the frequent criticisms of the fragmentation and ineffectiveness of existing educational research and development efforts, the Office of Education established two Research and Development Centers in FY 1964 and announced plans for another three the following year. The agency allocated nearly $1 million for the two R&D centers for FY 1964. The centers were "designed to concentrate resources on a particular problem area in education over an extended period of time. These centers require the services of a permanent core of professional staff members supplemented by the efforts of practicing educators for 5 to 10 years."⁽³⁵⁾

Following the election of Lyndon Johnson in 1964, several presidential task forces were created to investigate and improve the federal government. John Gardner chaired the influential task force on education, which made recommendations on many different topics.⁽³⁶⁾ The Gardner Task Force acknowledged the centrality of research and development for improving education, but saw current federal involvement in these activities as woefully inadequate and short-sighted:

• Only in the last few years have the states and the federal government responded in any substantial fashion to the need for continuous study for the improvement of education. When viewed against the $33 billion we spend annually on education at all levels, the support for research, even as augmented by foundations and private corporations, is a trickle....

• A massive burst of innovation is called for. And in this era of continuous and rapid change, in which every year brings a new set of challenges, we cannot depend upon a single burst of innovation. We need a system designed for continuous renewal, a system in which appraisal and innovation are built in. That is why references to research and development, to innovation and experiment, appear in every chapter of this report.⁽³⁷⁾

Instead of being content with expanding cooperative research projects or even with increasing the number of new research and development (R&D) centers, the Gardner Task Force, drawing upon the experiences of the sciences, called for the establishment of national laboratories:

• ...the Task Force recommends federal aid for the establishment of large-scale national educational laboratories which would develop and disseminate ideas and programs for improving educational practices throughout the country. There should be at least a dozen major laboratories and perhaps two or three dozen more that are specialized or less ambitious in scope.

• By "laboratories" we do not mean small-scale efforts, operating out of a corner or a department of education, rooted in the interests of a few faculty members, and having little connection with the daily practice of education in the community. As we conceive them, the laboratories would be closely akin to the great national laboratories of the Atomic Energy Commission and should share many of their features. Improvement or innovation in the education of our children is at least as important as the maintenance of our defense and deserves a similar effort.⁽³⁸⁾

While applauding basic research, the Gardner Task Force stressed the need for more rigorous, long-term development of educational curricula and practices. They expected the laboratories to forge close links with schools, state departments of education, research universities and, n some cases, even industries. Laboratories were also expected to have experimental schools attached to them and they were to "bring scholars and teachers into a working team."⁽³⁹⁾

The recommendations of the Gardner Task Force on research and development were incorporated the following year into Title IV of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965.⁽⁴⁰⁾ With the passage and funding of ESEA, the Office of Education was transformed from a rather small federal agency to one of the largest. Appropriations for the Office of Education soared from less than half a billion dollars in FY 1960 to $1.5 billion for FY 1965. By FY 1967 they had risen to $3.9 billion, a nearly eight-fold increase in 8 years. Most of these funds, however, went for services for at-risk children rather than for research and development.⁽⁴¹⁾

As the Office of Education grew, the research and demonstration functions of the agency expanded as well. The size of the research budget mushroomed from $3 million in FY 1960 to nearly $100 million in FY 1967 (approximately $40 million of which was for laboratory operations and construction as well as for support of the R&D centers).⁽⁴²⁾ Overall, the statistical and research functions of the Office of Education grew so rapidly that it was difficult to keep track of the various new initiatives and to coordinate them into a coherent plan for educational development.

As part of the Office of Education's reorganization in 1965, the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) was created as a staff unit within the larger agency. Congress welcomed the creation of NCES, but it criticized the ability of the agency to process statistical data - especially due to the lack of adequate in-house computing facilities.⁽⁴³⁾ At the end of the decade NCES created the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to evaluate the academic achievements of students in the 4^th, 8^th, and 12^th grades.⁽⁴⁴⁾ Yet overall, data collection and dissemination of statistical information were de-emphasized in the 1960s while research and development activities flourished.

The Office of Research recognized in the mid-1960s that many teachers and school administrators were not aware of the studies being produced by that agency and therefore it created the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). Modeled after the Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information, ERIC was intended to collect and disseminate exemplary research and classroom information, using computerized storage and retrieval of the assembled information. More than a dozen clearinghouses were created and housed in various universities. ERIC provided considerable help for researchers, but school teachers and policy makers often questioned the quality or usefulness of those materials for their own needs.⁽⁴⁵⁾

Some of the earlier assumptions about the nature of educational research and development strategies of the laboratories and R&D centers, however, were changed in the process of implementation. While the Gardner Task Force and ESEA of 1965 proposed large-scale educational laboratories and R&D centers, the Office of Education pursued a different policy. Instead of concentrating the recently expanded research and development funds on just a few large laboratories and centers, the Office of Education, by FY 1967, had funded 20 small regional educational laboratories as well as 10 small R&D centers. Proponents of establishing a larger number of labs and centers assumed that large sums of additional monies soon would be forthcoming. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The original mid-1960s vision of supportive large-scale, long-term research and development had been quietly transformed and ultimately weakened.⁽⁴⁶⁾

Educators and some policy makers had hoped for a major increase in research and development funding in the late 1960s, but domestic federal budget cuts necessitated by the escalating expenses of the Vietnam War ended that possibility. As the Bureau of Research realized that additional funding would not be forthcoming, they reduced the number of laboratories by five in FY 1969 and another four the following year. The net result of these changes was that the high hopes and expectations for the centers and laboratories in the mid-1960s had all but vanished in practice.⁽⁴⁷⁾

[II. Expanding Federal Educational Research. . .]

[IV. Creation and Evolution of the. . .]