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Dr. Sunley

November 2, 1999

Page two

We would appreciate receiving your transcript edits by November 15, 1999 and responses to the follow-up questions by December 15, 1999. Please send them to the Committee on Science, attention: Mr. Steven Howell, B-374 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515. Your responses will be published as part of the official record of the hearing.

Thank you again for your participation in the hearing.

Sincerely,

NICK SMITH

Chair

Subcommittee on Basic Research

NS/sch
Enclosure

STATEMENT OF DR. C. KENT MCGUIRE

ASSISTANT SECRETARY

OFFICE OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND IMPROVEMENT

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Subcommittee on Basic Research

Committee on Science

U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

October 26, 1999

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee,

The Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) is the research arm of the Department of Education. While research is also supported by other offices of the Department, OERI's mission is to provide national leadership for educational research and statistics. Our mandate is rather broad, encompassing the following five comprehensive areas: 1) the improvement of student achievement, the design of curricula, and the development of assessment tools; 2) identifying, developing, and evaluating programs and models for enhancing the educational opportunities and achievement of students who are at risk of educational failure; 3) the development of approaches for the restructuring and reform of school governance, finance, policymaking, and management at state, local, and school levels that hold promise for improving educational equity and excellence; 4) promoting the successful development and early childhood education of infants, toddlers, and preschool children; and 5) improving lifelong learning in formal educational institutions, work settings, and informal settings, such as libraries, museums, and communities.

Currently, OERI must support research studies in each of these areas with a budget of only $65 million. This budget is distributed across several kinds of grant mechanisms. Approximately $13 million of this budget is allotted to our Field-Initiated Studies Program, which supports investigator-initiated proposals by researchers and practitioners in universities, schools, and other kinds of institutions. The major portion of the research budget supports a wide-ranging set of educational research activities at various university-based national research and development centers. These centers are charged with carrying out coherent, sustained, and programmatic research concerning problems of national significance, using well-conceptualized and theoretically sound frameworks. In addition to conducting scientifically rigorous studies capable of generating findings that advance theory and knowledge in fields pertaining to the broad domain of education, the work of the centers is of sufficient size, scope and duration to potentially yield definitive guidance for improvement efforts. OERI currently funds 12 centers that address topics such as cultural and linguistic diversity, the assessment of educational quality, mathematics and science learning, teaching and education policy, early learning and development, postsecondary improvement, and adult learning and literacy. Finally, the balance of the research budget is used to support specialized initiatives, such as the Interagency Education Research Initiative (IERI).

We have requested a significant increase in our research budget for FY2000—an increase of $45 million for a total budget of $110 million. In addition, we are working with our own authorizing committees on a reauthorization proposal for FY2000. Our current mandates far exceed what can be accomplished with existing resources; however, we hope to achieve a reauthorization which, along with increased funding, will permit growth as well as a greater ability to focus on supporting research efforts aimed at solving many of the pressing problems faced by educators. Concomitantly, reauthorization will enhance our continuing efforts to both build capacity in the educational research community and strengthen our peer review process, thereby ensuring improvement in the quality of the targeted research efforts we hope to fund.

Overview of Discussion of Funded Research Activities

In my remarks today, I will begin by discussing several major areas of educational research that are in the current OERI portfolio. Next, I will provide a summary of the kinds of research awards made by the agency in FY1999. This will be followed by a description of the origins and objectives of both the Comprehensive School Reform Designs (CSRD) competition and the Interagency Education Research Initiative (IERI). With respect to the IERI, I will also discuss some of the details concerning the FY1999 competition and the awards that were made, as well as plans for the FY2000 competition. Finally, I will describe some recent notable efforts to fund research syntheses that have yielded direct and compelling implications for the design of instructional strategies.

Major Areas of Educational Research

In this section, I will be discussing three major ways in which OERI-funded research has furthered the educational enterprise in recent years. These areas are: 1) promoting school reform and improvement; 2) assisting teachers and administrators; and 3) helping policymakers reach informed decisions. In each area I will describe several studies and how they have helped educators, policymakers, and others.

Promoting School Reform and Improvement

Fostering school reform and improvement is a central purpose of much of the research sponsored by OERI, and raising student achievement is the main goal. Several reform approaches developed by OERI research centers have had a major impact on the field. Perhaps best known is Success for All, a comprehensive program for restructuring elementary schools serving students who are at risk of educational failure. Based on the work of center researchers and others, it was developed by the Johns Hopkins University center, currently called the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed At Risk (CRESPAR). Success for All focuses on reading, writing, and language arts from pre-kindergarten to grade six. It guides schools to use research-based curriculum materials, extensive professional development, one-on-one tutoring, and active family support to help children succeed academically. Success for All is now being used by more than 1100 elementary schools, most of which have Title I schoolwide programs. Evaluations in a number of school districts have repeatedly found positive effects of Success for All on the achievement of students. Spanish language adaptations are also widely used and have been evaluated successfully. More recently, programs in mathematics, science, and social studies have been added to Success for All in what is called Roots and Wings. To date, Root and Wings has been implemented in approximately 100 schools. In sum, Success for All has shown that with local commitment and a strong program, children can learn to read and thus be prevented from falling behind. Moreover, by providing educators with a well-developed and rigorously evaluated program, Success for All obviates the need for individual districts to design and test these types of programs themselves.

Assisting Teachers and Administrators

OERI research has helped improve the professional skills and knowledge of teachers and school leaders in a number of ways, including the dissemination of research-based information and guidance for policymakers and teachers. For example, the Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence (CREDE) at the University of California - Santa Cruz has developed five research-based principles for effective teaching, including developing language across the curriculum, connecting school to students' lives, and teaching complex thinking. A related video produced by CREDE that illustrates the use of these principles in the classroom has been distributed widely. While the principles were designed originally for teachers of students at risk of failure, they are applicable across grade levels, student populations, and content areas. Finally, it should be noted that these principles are based in part on many studies funded by OERI since the early 1980s through several previous research centers.

Helping Policymakers Reach Informed Decisions

Meeting the needs of education policymakers for research-based information is another role for OERI-sponsored studies. Education policymakers include governors, state legislators, chief state school officers, state education department officials, members of boards of education, and others. Since the mid 1980s, the Center for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at the University of Pennsylvania has studied state and local education reforms in order to document their progress. Researchers have found that early policies tended to be piecemeal and ad hoc, with conflicting results. This led center researchers to the concept of "systemic reform" - setting high student achievement standards and coordinating policies for course content, instruction, and activities related to these standards. The center's 1991 report, Designing Coherent Education Policy, became a guide for many states, associations, and other reformers by virtue of delineating a systemic vision of reform and the need for policy alignment.

More recent CPRE research at the local level indicates that to be effective, standards need to be combined with incentives and capacity-building efforts. For example, it may be necessary to restructure teacher compensation and capacity building via massive investment in professional development to help teachers teach to the new standards. A number of states, including Delaware, Massachusetts, Michigan and Missouri have relied heavily on CPRE's research to design their standards-based reform initiatives. Furthermore, the National Science Foundation's Systemic Reform Initiative is based on concepts developed at CPRE. Finally, CPRE also has influenced U.S. Department of Education program policies, such as providing greater flexibility (e.g., Title I schoolwide programs) and encouraging program coordination.

Student assessments are used to gauge policy effects. The OERI Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) at the University of California Los Angeles has created and studied assessment models of student achievement based on challenging academic content and deep intellectual skills. It also has examined the implementation and effects of newer performance assessment programs, how well they

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