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I Sobering History
Huh:
The federal government has been by far the largest
supporter of education research in this country, and
so the history of its investments is an important back-
drop to thinking about SERP. The record of the
government's continuing efforts over four decades to develop a
significant role for research in the U.S. Department of Education
and its predecessor agencies was summarized for the commit-
tee by Emerson Elliott (2002~.
The current leadership of the U.S. Department of Education
and its Institute for Education Sciences (IES) has a strong presi-
dential mandate to strengthen the agency's capacity to bring
science to the service of education reform. This has also been
true on two prior occasions: with the inauguration of President
Lyndon B. lohnson's Great Society program and then again
during the Nixon administration.
In 1964 Johnson established a President's Task Force on
Education, chaired by John Gardner, then president of the
Carnegie Corporation and later to become secretary of the U.S.
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. This group pro-
duced the first formal and public vision for what research in
education might accomplish and how that might be made to
happen. The vision and the rhetoric with which it is expressed
are in some regards remarkably similar to our own (Gardner,
1964~:
When viewed against the $33 billion we spend annually on
education at all levels, the support for research, even as aug-
mented by foundations and private corporations, is a trickle. This
has to be changed. We now know beyond all doubt that, educa-
tionally speaking, the old ways of doing things will not solve our
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problems .... A massive burst of innovation is called for.... We
need a system designed for continuous renewal, a system in which
reappraisal and innovation are built in .... [A]bove all, what is
taught and how it is taught must change.
Like the SERP initiative, the 1964 task force was primarily inter-
ested in making research useful to practice (Gardner, 1964~:
The problem today is not only one of innovation, but of convert-
ing new ideas into forms useable in the classroom, testing their
applicability in the field, disseminating the proven ideas throughout
the educational system.
The Gardner report envisioned close (although, unlike SERP,
not collaborative) links between research and practice (Gardner,
1964~:
The laboratories would have to be intimately related to the
educational system at all levels. They would have close ties with
the State departments of education. They would establish links
with numerous schools (or school systems) for the sake of
teacher training and the field testing of new programs. It would
also be essential that each laboratory have some kind of affiliation
with a neighboring university.
The major "innovation" proposed in the Gardner report was
federal aid for the establishment of large-scare national educa-
tion laboratories, which would develop and disseminate ideas
and programs for improving educational practices throughout
the country (Gardner, 1964~:
There should be at least a dozen major laboratories and perhaps
two or three dozen more that are specialized or less ambitious in
scope. By "laboratories" we do not mean small-scale efforts,
operating out of a corner of a department of education, rooted in
the interests of a few faculty members, and having little connec-
tion with the daily practice of education in the community. As we
conceive them, the laboratories would be more closely akin to
the great national laboratories of the Atomic Energy Commission
and should share many of their features. Improvement or innova-
tion in the education of our children is at least as important as the
maintenance of our defense and deserves a similar effort.
The whole package was estimated to reach a cost of S250 million
(in 1964 dollars) annually after five years.
"Unfortunately," writes Elliott (2002), "we never learned
what national educational laboratories might achieve because
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STRATEGIC EDUCATION RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP
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they were never created." The career staff at the Office of Educa-
tion (OK) neither read the Gardner report nor gave its recom-
mendation for national laboratories serious consideration. The
statutory prohibition on OF influence over the curriculum and
management of schools occasioned deep concern about political
fallout from anything in education with the word "national"
attached to it. Moreover, the OF appropriations that could real-
istically be anticipated for research were clearly not sufficient to
the Gardner vision, even in the heady days of the Great Society
education legislation of 1965.
Instead, regional educational laboratories were created and
are still with us. They are, in Elliott's judgment, "a set of small
institutions with ill-defined missions," for which federal policy
"has been reformulated by almost every head of education re-
search since 1965 or perhaps a more accurate phrase, the heads
of research have tried to reformulate Federal policy."
The second great vision for research came from the pen of
Daniel Patrick Moynihan early in President Nixon's administra-
tion (Public Papers of the President, 1970~. The key feature of
this reform proposal from the president to Congress was the
creation of an education research agency, independent from the
Office of Education of the Department of Health, Education,
and Welfare, that would be known as the National Institute of
Education (NIE).
The idea was for NIE to link educational research and ex-
perimentation across federal agencies to "the attainment of par-
ticular national educational goals." The president's message
made clear that the institute would devise its own agenda-
setting priorities, taking the lead in measurement of education
output, developing a coherent approach, serving as an objective
national body, and evaluating new departures in teaching.
In contrast to the Gardner report, the Moynihan document
made no mention of "development." But it shared with Gardner
a view about who should conduct research scholars from dif-
ferent disciplines, largely through universities, nonprofits, and
other organizations as well as a budget projection of S250
million annually (more than S1 billion in today's dollars).
What happened? NIE was created two years later with, as
Elliott puts it, a notable lack of enthusiasm, especially on the
Senate side. Its operations began not with the singleness of
purpose evinced in the president's message to Congress, but
instead with the transfer of existing research programs from the
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Office of Education. Before NIE had established and staffed its
own agenda, it had to take on direct management responsibili-
ties for ongoing programs, and it never really recovered the
initiative. In addition, political tensions between Congress and
the administration in particular, the voucher program, a top
administration priority had a rapid and ultimately crippling
effect. In a dramatic signal of what was to come, the institute
received an appropriation mark of zero from the Senate in 1974.
Funding for NIE plummeted and continued to spiral down-
ward when its functions were assumed by the Office of Educa-
tional Research and Development. Between 1973 and 1989, the
total decline (in constant 1990 dollars) was SS percent (National
Research Council, 1992:95~.
For all its problems, NIE did have enormous success in
attracting talented people who went on to make important con-
tributions to the advancement of education and social policy.
NIE also planned and began lines of research that have made a
continuing contribution to education, such as on capacity build-
ing/effective schools; reading; teaching; the first Title I evalua-
tion; and the National Education Library, which NIE literally
resurrected from warehouse storage.
But it did not become the independent and strategic re-
search agency envisioned. Redecting on the period, Elliott writes
that "those of us who were a part of those early years of NIE
learned how personal views of the public, the Congress, and the
Administration cannot be separated from an education research
agenda in the U.S. Department of Education. The committee
also learned that the Department of Education probably differs
from other agencies through which the federal government in-
vests in education research (e.g., the National Science Founda-
tion, the National Institute for Child Health and Human Devel-
opment, the Office of Naval Research, and the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency) in which the perspectives and actions of
researchers appear to be a steadier guide to progress" (emphasis
added).
Summing up his 40-plus years as a participant in this his-
tory, Elliott writes (2002~: "We have a Department of Education
research effort that is the merest shadow of either the Gardner
or the Moynihan/Nixon visions...." With at least 14 assistant
secretaries and heads of research (and many acting assistant
secretaries and directors) in the past 30 years, it has been diffi-
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STRATEGIC EDUCATION RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP
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cult to sustain an investment in serious research and build
momentum. Elliott finds, instead, a "four-decade long record of
lack of continuity, or synthesis, or efforts to accumulate what
has been learned from research and from practice; lack of strong
research methodologies and of effectively implemented focus
or priorities." He concludes also that "hot-button issues such
as vouchers or curriculum development are nearly impossible
to investigate through the Department of Education because the
motives of any who propose such work are suspect."
From this first-person account we take many lessons, not all
of them cautionary. The success that NIE had in attracting first-
rate talent to the cause of improving education with a strong
vision and plan of action lends credibility to our aspirations for
the SERP endeavor. Public concern about and belief in educa-
tion is there throughout. Moreover, to know that the best and
brightest in earlier generations saw the great potential for re-
search to contribute to education practice is important, even if
we have not yet realized that potential.
One of our key judgments that we see confirmed in this
history is that the needs and rhythms of politics and research
are fundamentally different. Although the two cannot and
should not be entirely divorced, distance is important. The ac-
cumulation of knowledge that is needed to fuel change and
innovation in complex systems requires coherence and continu-
ity and staying power.
Equally important, of course, is the matter of funding. Re-
search is a cumulative process; advances in knowledge come
incrementally and by building on what has gone before. No
matter how good the plan or how talented the people, without
long-term, stable funding, a powerful accumulation of research
is simply not possible. The history of NIE shows how quickly
the funding can disappear. Impact is also a function of level of
effort (i.e., sufficiency of funding). As a 1994 National Research
Council report on the Office of Education Research and Im-
provement described in some detail, the funding available for
education research and development has lagged far behind fed-
eral funding for research in agriculture, health, defense, and
transportation, based on whatever measure one might choose
(National Research Council, 1992:95-106~.
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R E F E R E N C E S
Elliott, E.
2002 Three Visionsfor Investment in Education Research: An Insider's Recollec-
tionsfrom Four Decades in Federal Policy and Practice January, 2002~.
Paper prepared for the SERP Committee, National Research Council,
Washington, DC.
Gardner, l.
1964 Report of the President's Task Force on Education. (November 14, 1964~.
The report is available at the LB] Presidential Library, Austin, TX.
National Research Council
1992 Research and Education Reform: Roles for the Office of Educational Re-
search and Improvement. Committee on the Federal Role in Education
Research. R.C. Atkinson and G.B. Jackson, eds. Washington, DC:
National Academy Press.
Public Papers of the President
1970 Special Message to the Congress on Education Reform, March 3,
1970. Available from the Office of the Federal Register, National
Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
research partnership
