There has been no shortage of advice regarding how the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) might reinvent itself to improve the utility, relevance, and impact of the research it funds. Nor is there a lack of efforts to glean lessons from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), some of which are referenced within this report. This…

In 2002 Congress passed the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA), authorizing the creation of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) as the research, evaluation, statistics, and assessment arm of the Department of Education, and crystallizing the federal government's commitment to providing national leadership in expanding fundamental…

Over the past few decades, there have been federal and state investments in innovative education programs, policies, and tools. Many private organizations--both corporate and philanthropic--also have fueled the development and piloting of novel education ideas. Yet major gaps and challenges remain to develop and scale the impact of ground-breaking…

As transformative reforms like the Common Core State Standards and educator evaluation roll out amidst a rapidly changing demographic landscape, the need for getting high-quality research on timely topics into the hands of practitioners grows all the more urgent. While rigor and relevance need not be a question of "either/or", but rather…

The challenge of creating evidence-based practice bedevils a number of fields. In education, the federal government has historically placed substantial responsibility for translational research in the hands of the Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs), which were established in 1966 as part of the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act…

Despite constraints on federal resources and authority in education policy, the federal government has a pivotal role to play in identifying a compelling, high-impact focal point that aligns policy priorities at the federal, state, and local levels. The federal government could play a critical role in expanding students' access to excellent…

Unlike every other developed country, Canada has had no national or pan-Canadian agency that works to support and promote research in education, and especially to build connections between research, policy, and practice. Canada has a national granting council that funds academic research in all fields, including education (the Social Sciences and…

A growing number of foundations, entrepreneurs, national education groups, and public officials have called in recent months for a stepped-up emphasis on generating findings, programs, and products that practitioners find useful and that will help revolutionize the way America does school. If it takes hold, the new focus represents a break from…

The OERI-funded research summarized in this special "Kappan" section constitutes a "trickle-up" research agenda animated by real respect for local autonomy and unwavering commitment to public service. The most valuable research will emerge from a collaborative culture uniting university-based researchers, K-12 practitioners and…

Education 2005 is a report prepared for the Subcommittee on Select Education of the Committee on Education and Labor in the U.S. House of Representatives. This article reproduces verbatim the foreword to that report, written by the subcommittee's chairman Major R. Owens (D-New York). (DB)

America is a knowledge-based society. But the knowledge business has a problem. It does not know enough. When General Electric or Microsoft has a problem, it spends several percent of its revenues--perhaps billions of dollars--on research and development. It does so despite enormous demands on the resources that drive its profits. Historically, as…

This manual is designed to accompany a set of 31 CD-ROM discs. Disc 1 contains a database of some 8,300 bibliographic records representing publications of the OERI-supported National Research and Development (R&D) Centers acquired and processed by ERIC across the 30-year period 1966-1997. Discs 2-31 contain digitized page images of the full…

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. After more than 3.5 years of experience with these changes, it is time to assess the results of the new approach. Rather than looking only at…

Presents views of the opponents and supporters of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Mathematics Institute. (HM)

The leadership role of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) in developing a System of Expert Panels to identify and share promising and exemplary products, programs. and practices is discussed. The System of Expert Panels should enable the Federal government to help the public learn about replicable research and development…