Research and Education Reform Roles for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (1992) / Chapter Skim
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4 APPRAISAL OF OERI
4 APPRAISAL OF OERI
Pages 107-134
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From page 107... ...
The result is manifest throughout the agency: from 1980 to 1991 the number of centers more than doubled while the budget for them (in constant dollars) decreased by 21 percent; the field-initiated research program now provides grants for a maximum of 18 months, with virtually no chance of a renewal award; and the FIRST program funds more than 100 school-based reform efforts that are supposed to 107
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From page 108... ...
The controversy has variously involved the Congress, the President, the education community, researchers, federal administrative agencies, and factions within OERI and NIE. Some controversy results from the sheer numbers of potential users of education R&D: 535 members of Congress; the administrators of several federal agencies; 50 governors, state legislatures, and state departments of education; hundreds of intermediate state agencies; numerous education associations; 15,000 school districts; 83,000 public schools and 26,000 private schools; almost 3 million teachers; and 32 million parents of schoolage children.
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From page 109... ...
A History of "Politicization" The National Institute of Education was born in the midst of political maneuvering. It was proposed by President Nixon, a Republican, at a time when he was simultaneously proposing cuts in federal funding for many social and education programs to a Democratically controlled Congress (Sproull et al., 1978~.
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From page 110... ...
The examples of politicization, however, vary markedly depending on who is citing them. Members of Congress and their staffs frequently charge that the administration's ideological and political agendas have skewed the appointment of top administrators, the selection of topics to be studied, the determination of how the topics are to be studied, the awarding of contracts, and the editing of reports and timing of their release.
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From page 111... ...
The American Educational Research Association, the primary organization of education researchers, had little inclination or skill in marshalling political support. The third group, the Council for Educational Development and Research (CEDaR)
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From page 112... ...
The National Council of Educational Research was retained, but as before, had authority only over OERI. In 1985 the Secretary of Education reorganized OERI to make the semiautonomous units become line offices and replaced the policy-making council with a National Advisory Council on Educational Research and Improvement.
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From page 113... ...
A few years later Congress modified the governance of the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) providing it with a commissioner serving a 4-year term, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of Congress.
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From page 114... ...
A policy-making board, unlike a top-level advisory council, appears to impinge on the normal executive branch prerogative of proposing federal programs and activities, but the actual effect is modest since the President is still free to submit whatever budget proposals he or she chooses and to sign or veto legislation. Some fear that a policy-making board can create a dangerous imbalance in the powers of the President relative to the Congress.
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From page 115... ...
The declining budgets have alienated agency staff, minimized the discretion of top administrators, and contributed to an impression of failure. In addition, the assistant secretary of any highly visible government agency must respond to the diverse and sometimes conflicting demands of the President, Congress, and the public.
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From page 116... ...
Most of the directors and assistant secretaries do remain long enough to reorganize the agency. It is not clear whether the reorganizations are due to a persisting belief that there are structural solutions to the problems of educational research or due to the lack of opportunities for discretion in other areas of managing the agency.
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From page 117... ...
As indicated above, new directors have quickly become criticized and demoralized. Careful agenda setting became futile; "quick fixes" replaced thoughtful investments; and few sustained research and development activities could be maintained.
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From page 118... ...
The laboratories used to do considerable work directly with schools and teachers, but they now do more work with state agencies and improvement assistance organizations. In the 1970s NIE provided support for the graduate training of minority and women researchers, but there has been very little such support in the 1980s.
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From page 119... ...
COORDINATION AND COOPERATION It was hoped that the creation of NIE in 1972 would serve to improve coordination among several programs that had been inherited from the Office of Education centers, laboratories, ERIC, career education model development, experimental schools, researcher training, field initiated research, and dissemination activities (National Institute of Education, 1973a)
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From page 120... ...
Although the centers do research that could be of use in the laboratories' development and technical assistance work, the laboratories seldom work closely with the centers. Conversely, although the laboratories have extensive contacts with state departments of education and local school districts, the centers seldom seek their advice about the needs of those organizations.
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From page 121... ...
NDN state facilitators are still primarily involved in disseminating innovations, although it is now well understood that innovations alone, without broader reform in the schools, seldom have substantial and lasting effects. The laboratories are increasingly assisting districts and schools with systemic reform, but without regular input from the NDN facilitators.
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From page 122... ...
There has generally been little communication among those agencies and little monitoring of their activities. When the National Education Goals Panel recently wanted to know how much the federal government spends on education R&D, the Office of Management and Budget had to do a special survey (National Education Goals Panel, 1991~.
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From page 123... ...
It recently conducted a detailed survey of federal agency activities in mathematics and science education activities, including research activities within that domain. Most knowledgeable observers suggest that despite the appeal of attempts to coordinate related activities in several federal agencies, the forces working against such efforts are strong (Kaestle, 1991~.
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From page 124... ...
Instability often results in mediocrity. Most of the research-based innovations that are currently available to educators provide only modest improvements, partly because of the complexity of human learning and behavior, but also partly because these innovations are seldom subject to successive iterations of research, development, and testing aimed at strengthening effects, assuring effectiveness in a wide range of settings, enhancing market appeal, and minimizing costs.
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From page 125... ...
A state department of education official wrote to the committee, supporting the need for sustained efforts: "Educational innovation is difficult and risky. We need a stable system of R&D programs so that risk is not only tolerated, but also valued and encouraged." As the nation moves from innovation to comprehensive reform, the need for sustained efforts becomes even more important.
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From page 126... ...
The centers and laboratories conduct reviews sometimes to provide summaries to scholars and practitioners, and sometimes to inform their future work. The centers usually publish their reviews in journals, and the laboratories often print and distribute theirs to the state and local education agencies with whom they work.
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From page 127... ...
The latter of these two undertakings involved an expert panel that examined and discussed the available literature on the topic, prepared an interim report that was released publicly, invited written comments and held an open meeting for responses, and then prepared the final report (Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, 1977, 1985~. Since 1977 the Office of Medical Applications of Research at the NIH has held almost 100 consensus development conferences to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of medical interventions and to improve the translation of biomedical research results into knowledge that can be used effectively by health care providers.
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From page 128... ...
A recent Institute of Medicine report (1990~-reviewed the NIH consensus development process and recommended more input from practitioners during the planning of the conferences, more thorough preparation for the conferences, experimentation with new means of facilitating the group decision making, and adequate financial support. Although OERI and NIE have supported reviews of R&D literature, they have rarely summarized and synthesized what has been accomplished under their own funding.
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From page 129... ...
The Experimental Schools Program provided substantial funding to a few local schools districts that agreed to undertake locally initiated comprehensive change (Doyle, 1976; Herriott and Gross, 1979~. And the State Capacity Building Program funded state education agencies to develop stronger links between research and practice (Louis et al., 1984~.
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From page 130... ...
On the supply side, several aspects of education R&D and dissemination activities have made them difficult to use or otherwise unattractive to teachers and administrators. Research reports are difficult to read and interpret, many innovative programs have been either ambiguous or overly rigid, and many allegedly effective programs have had only modest effects.
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From page 131... ...
Publishers wanted to be involved at an earlier stage of development than most centers and laboratories preferred; they perceived the school districts to be not particularly interested in innovative approaches; and they had little interest in "thin market" materials such as those designed for high school principals or students of a specific state (BCMA Associates, 1977~. Most teachers, principals, school superintendents, school boards, and chief state school officers are members of at least one of six major professional associations.
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From page 132... ...
On the demand side of the research-practice linkage problem, there are several constraints. Parents often do not insist on improvements to schools, teachers have been immersed in traditional instructional approaches, schools of education seldom prepare teachers to use research to change schools, teachers work under schedules that leave little time for anything but their immediate responsibilities, and significant improvement of schools requires considerable leadership and coordination.
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From page 133... ...
Teachers' work in schools usually involves nonstop instructional schedules throughout the day, with course planning and paper grading carried out after school hours. Teachers spend most of their day isolated from other adults and sources of professional support (Goodlad, 1984; Huberman, 1984; Lortie, 1975~.
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From page 134... ...
The implementation of a single innovation seldom substantially improves schooling. Effective reform of schools requires coordinated changes across subject matter, grades, and management practices.
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