Congress Must Better Support Education Research, Witnesses Tell House Education Panel
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The federal government should support education research that is rigorous, relevant to real-world problems, and geared to understanding what works and what should be improved in the classroom, witnesses told the House Education and the Workforce Committee today. Currently, less than 1 percent of the federal education budget goes to research – far less than in other fields.
“Research is not effective if it only answers abstract questions or is published in a professional journal,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the senior Democrat on the committee. “Research must be relevant as well as rigorous. And it must be widely shared with those who work with students in order to make a difference.”
Prior to 2002, education research was all too often subject to political influence and not based on the scientific method. In response, the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA) created the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) to fund scientifically rigorous research, outside the influence of politics or the trend of the moment. As a result of ESRA and IES, there is now a wealth of data that can be used to measure what is working for students, make corrections where things are not working, and create ways to ensure continuous improvement in the future.
“ESRA and IES have produced incredibly important changes,” said James Kemple, executive director of research alliance for New York City Schools at New York University. “Since its inception, IES has funded and released findings from 90 studies that meet the widely agreed-upon ‘gold standard’ for research. Today, more than 25 universities are now attracting the nation’s best and brightest to training programs in rigorous education science.”
For example, the Northeastern regional lab created a research alliance on early childhood. The regional lab alliance gathered the region’s early childhood stakeholders to create a research agenda that focuses on standards, assessments, and practices to improve early education. The resulting research will now be more useful to teachers and have a ready-made network for disseminating it.
While IES has transformed education research, witnesses also testified that across-the-board federal spending cuts known as “sequestration” are threatening to dampen its efforts. As a result, Congress must find a way to invest in education research that avoids waste and avoids harmful austerity.
“The current economic and fiscal environment makes it more important than ever to use scientific evidence to inform difficult decisions about how to allocate scarce resources, and to invest in building more and better evidence about the efforts we make to strengthen our schools, particularly efforts that flow from the federal government,” Kemple said.
Today’s hearing comes as the committee is expected to take next steps to reauthorize ESRA this fall.
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