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America's students fall far short of academic achievement levels that policy leaders, parents, the public, and the media believe are necessary to equip them for living, for active citizenship, and for productive employment in the 21st century. This is perhaps the most frequently repeated message Americans hear, see, or read about education. Rarely, however, is our nation told that research has proved that it can make a difference in the practice of education so that more students will learn effectively. Yet that has been the record. Members of the National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board believe that investments in education research are justified, and, more important, that commitment to substantial growth in federal support of these investments is urgent. Without these investments, guidance for education policies and practices is too often left to uninformed opinion and unreasoned prejudice.
The Board has reached these conclusions as a result of experiences shared by the members since its establishment in March 1995. It has carried out the duties assigned in law, many of them in collaboration with OERI, commissioned studies and evaluations, and consulted with many individuals. Representatives of scholarly organizations, schools, advocacy groups, and governmental agencies have briefed the Board about how research is carried on, what findings have been reported and analyzed, and how those findings have been put to use. Established under the Educational Research, Development, Dissemination, and Improvement Act of 1994, the Board has had responsibility to develop policies and priorities for research in education. This policy paper is the Board's first comprehensive statement on the federal effort in education research.
Two important trends provide the context for the nation's challenge to helping our youth reach acceptable educational performance standards and outcomes. The first of these is the rapid increase in the number of students "at risk" in school districts that are least able to marshal the human and financial resources to meet their needs. The demographic and geographic characteristics of projected growth in the youth population over the next 30 years suggest that virtually all of it will be concentrated in these "at risk" areas. But one should not suppose that our national challenge is confined to children at risk in deteriorating urban school systems. As the recent Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) has made clear, deficiencies in mathematics and science skills and knowledge extend to all students at all levels of relative proficiency, including those who live in well-financed districts with mostly majority population.
A second important contextual trend is the accelerating onrush of information technology. Already reaching into many aspects of the lives of students, the new technologies are increasingly shaping formal education, for better or worse, and reemphasizing disparities between the "haves" and the "have-nots." This trend is not simply a matter of access to computer hardware and software, vital as these factors are; it is also about the critical need to plan and integrate new technology into teaching and curricula, so as to expand and extend student learning.
These interacting trends represent a problem of immense national significance. The national educational enterprise in its many forms is widely and correctly understood to be a central device for the development of the knowledge, skills, and perspectives necessary to the success of our economy and the well being of our society. Education is also part of the glue that helps to bind us together as a community and a bridge across our many differences. Meeting these new challenges requires more than good will, energy, and resources. It also requires putting what we know to work and expanding our knowledge base so that our capacity to meet the challenges will be expanded. Trying to implement our hopes and our goals without careful research, testing, and development is likely to increase our frustrations without improving our performance.
In no way is research in education a quick and effortless path to success. Over the years, there have been many hard lessons to be learned. Educational improvement occurs slowly and in small increments no matter how powerful the research base behind it. Deep disagreements among prominent researchers are continual and perhaps inevitable. Professional educators have rarely become enthusiastic consumers of research. Weak designs and measures, combined with these professional doubts and disputes, have produced too many research results whose values and political implications are more prominent than their scientific validity. The educational research system has had powerful constraints and limitations on it, which have hindered numberless researchers and projects. The wonder is that educational researchers have been able to accomplish what they have.
Yet the accomplishments of research in education have been significant and their influence on education often wide. This perspective has been summarized in the report from a June 1998 conference on National Directions in Education Research Planning, which the Board sponsored jointly with OERI:
Educational research has been used time and again, at critical junctures, to improve teaching and learning. Important examples range from John Dewey through constructivism, to Edward L. Thorndike through behaviorism and educational testing. . .
Education research has supported the design and evaluation of many governmental programs at all levels. Studies of learning and school organizations have had a major impact on teaching, assessment, and education reforms. Three recent reports from the National Research Council (NRC) that sum up what has already been learned and how it might be used in education include: Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children; Improving Schooling for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda; and How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. A recent, multifaceted set of research reports, the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), is the latest, most comprehensive, and most significant of a generation's progress in building comparative international assessments of learning and instruction. The widely acclaimed "Success for All" and projects of the New American Schools are demonstrating the practical and powerful effects that research can have when it is systematically applied in the classroom.
Our first conclusion from these and many other examples is that research has a proven record in education. Our second is that federal support for education research is an investment that must be expanded several-fold. Others have come to this second conclusion as well. For example, in a 1997 report, a panel of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) called for sharp increases in education research appropriations—reaching 0.5 percent of U.S. spending for elementary and secondary education. The report of the National Directions conference agreed that greater funding for research in education would be wise and productive:
The prospect is that more confidence and opportunity could pay off handsomely, if the support is strategically provided.
The National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board not only concurs, it has created this policy statement to describe critical elements of a strategic design for the federal government's role in education research.
Congress created the Board as an external policy setting and advisory body for research in education. The Board sets priorities and approves standards. It also conducts reviews of OERI work, serves in a liaison capacity with the education research field and the public, and has responsibilities to strengthen the education research and development system. It enjoys substantial independence in gathering information, commissioning consultants, meeting with representatives of the education research system and consumers of that system, and, perhaps most importantly, communicating with the American public and Congress about education research. Among its specific responsibilities are the following:
The operations of the Board are required to be collaborative—carried out in concert with the Assistant Secretary as well as with researchers, teachers, school administrators, parents, students, employers, and policymakers. Indeed, the concept of collaboration is emphasized both in the statement of Board responsibilities in the law (such as in policy and priorities setting) and in the categories for Board appointments mandated in the law, namely:
Ex officio members in addition to the Assistant Secretary for OERI include the directors of research for the Department of Defense and the Department of Labor; the directors of the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Librarian of Congress; and the director of the Office of Indian Education Programs at the Department of the Interior.
It is now 4 years since the first meeting of the Board. During that time the Board has carried out its responsibility to approve standards for review of grant proposals, evaluation of exemplary and promising practices, and evaluation of OERI's work. It has examined and made recommendations on the peer review system at OERI, crucial to ensure high-quality work. It has collaborated with the former Assistant Secretary to set initial priorities. It has reviewed solicitations for regional educational laboratories, the research and development centers, and other major initiatives. The Board members have also stepped back to evaluate their functions more broadly, both to determine the effects of what members have done and to assess directions for education research in the future, especially as the time comes for reconsideration of the authorization of OERI's research and development authorities. The following pages describe the findings and conclusions from these studies (section II) as background for Board goals and recommendations (section III).
[Findings]