It is a much-lamented fact that research with the potential to inform or influence education policy instead remains policy inert. There are many reasons for this frustrating state of affairs, including a lack of strategic thinking on the part of researchers on how to successfully accomplish outreach--as opposed to communication with peers…

The question of how to estimate school and teacher contributions to student learning is fundamental to educational policy and practice, and the three thoughtful articles in this issue represent a major advance. The current level of public confusion about these issues is so severe and the consequences for schooling so great that it is a big relief…

Considers an approach to validating the selection of education indicators by incorporating them into a multilevel structural model and using the estimates from that model in policy-relevant simulations. The potential of this approach is demonstrated with data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988. (SLD)