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 has been a rise in the number of federally funded large scientific research initiatives, with increased calls to evaluate their processes and outcomes. This article describes efforts to evaluate such initiatives in one agency within the U.S. federal government. The authors introduce the Evaluation of Large…

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…

Five background papers were produced for the Research, Development and Dissemination System Committee of the National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board in preparation for the proposed reauthorization of the Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement. The first paper, "Shaping the Future of…

This work has been done as part of the effort to plan the National Institute of Education (NIE). The report, one of a series, describes four different management systems used by the Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA, the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Air Force in managing programmatic research and…

This work has been done as part of the effort to plan the National Institute of Education (NIE). The report, one of a series, describes four different methods used by three Federal agencies--the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research--in managing fundamental research. Fundamental research…

Strengths and weaknesses of three types of semiquantitative methods used by the federal government in research impact assessment are presented, and examples of their use are reviewed. These include the classic retrospective method, another retrospective approach, and accomplishments books used by selected research-sponsoring organizations. (SLD)

Surveys 32 officials of federal agencies and educational researchers to express historically grounded judgments on issues in educational research, including the poor reputation of the field. Criticisms that recur are that it does not pay off, that the community is in disarray, and that the field is politicized. (SLD)

Articles in this special issue deal with the assessment of the impact of research and are divided into segments concerning semiquantitative approaches; qualitative approaches; and quantitative and fiscal approaches. These articles illustrate the importance of the role of motivation and associated incentives. (SLD)

An evaluation of the Research and Development Centers and the Regional Educational Laboratories of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) was conducted by an outside analyst brought in in September 1991 by then Assistant Secretary Diane Ravitch. The Research and Development Centers have been one of the primary sources of…

At the request of the Association of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, the Office of Education undertook a survey of the 69 land-grant colleges and universities, including 17 institutions for Negroes. For more than a half century, these institutions have grown in importance as vital factors in the agricultural, industrial, and educational…