to their work. These multiple perspectives are in many ways indicative of the health of the enterprise, but they also render the development of a cohesive community with self-regulating norms difficult (Lagemann, 2000). In this spirit, we intend this report to provide a balanced account of scientific quality and rigor that sparks self-reflection within the research community about its roles and responsibilities for promoting scientific quality and advancing scientific understanding.

Finally, perhaps more than ever before, citizens, business leaders, politicians, and educators want credible information on which to evaluate and guide today’s reform and tomorrow’s education for all students. Driven by the performance goals inherent in standards-based reforms, they seek a working consensus on the challenges confronting education, on what works in what contexts and what doesn’t, and on why what works does work. Simply put, they seek trustworthy, scientific evidence on which to base decisions about education.

The committee was assembled in the fall of 2000 and was asked to complete its report by the fall of 2001. The charge from the committee’s sponsor, the National Educational Policy and Priorities Board of the U.S. Department of Education, was as follows:

To organize its deliberations, the committee translated this mandate into three framing questions:

• What are the principles of scientific quality in education research?

To address this question, the committee considered how the purposes, norms, methods, and traditions of scientific inquiry translated in the study of education. The committee also considered what scientific quality meant, both in individual research projects and in programs of research, to better

Front Matter (R1-R16)

Executive Summary (1-10)

1 Introduction (11-27)

2 Accumulation of Scientific Knowledge (28-49)

3 Guiding Principles for Scientific Inquiry (50-79)

4 Features of Education and Education Research (80-96)

5 Designs for the Conduct of Scientific Research in Education (97-126)

6 Design Principles for Fostering Science in a Federal Education Research Agency (127-157)

References (158-180)

Appendix: Biographical Sketches, Committee Members and Staff (181-188)