Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

Thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today.

Last year's bipartisan bill, which was considered by this subcommittee, was an important step toward improving the rigor and relevance of education research. The Administration supports the fundamental principles underlying that bill, and we look forward to working with you to refine it. We applaud you, Mr. Chairman, and the members of the Committee for your efforts.

I have been impressed and gratified by the Committee's attention and commitment to an issue that does not generate the wide popular notice of some other areas of education. In making that commitment, you share with this Administration the view that scientifically based research and evidence on what works are the cornerstones of educational reform.

The shared understanding of the Congress and the Administration about the role of research in educational reform was evidenced vividly in the recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). In that bill, passed by overwhelming majorities in both chambers and signed into law by the President on January 8, the phrase scientifically based research appears 110 times.

Scientifically based research will be a component of reform in the upcoming reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Elementary and Secondary Education, along with Special Education, account for approximately $30 billion in annual federal expenditures within the Department of Education.

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, $30 billion is a lot of money. We all recognize that, historically, this huge annual investment in the education of disadvantaged students and students with disabilities has not achieved everything that was expected of it. For instance, in the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading, 40 percent of white 4th graders read at a proficient level, compared with only 12 percent of African-American students. In some urban school districts that serve predominantly disadvantaged children, 70 percent of 4th graders cannot read at the basic level. Nothing has changed in the last decade in these statistics, and the overall gap between the highest and lowest performing students has actually increased in some subjects.

If scientifically based research is going to be the key to reform of our most important federal education programs, then we had better make sure that the federal office with the principal responsibility for generating that research has the tools it needs to get the job done. That is what we are here today to address.

In facing that task, I want this Committee to understand that we are dealing not only with gaps in student achievement, but also gaps in scientific knowledge. Consider some of the major program areas in the ESEA in which Congress instructed that funding decisions and practice should adhere to scientifically based research. These include the core academic subjects of reading, math, and science, school wide reform models, early literacy programs in preschools, professional development of teachers, supplementary educational services, education of gifted and talented students, educational technology, and programs for safe and drug-free schools, among others.

We have a substantial and persuasive research base in only one of these topics, learning how to read. That research base is the result of 30 years of continuous and cumulative work, funded primarily by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. That body of work was synthesized in the National Reading Panel report that formed the basis of the Reading First program in No Child Left Behind. However, even within reading, the research becomes substantially thinner when we move from learning to read at the beginning of elementary school to reading to learn, otherwise known as reading comprehension, at later points in schooling. In the other core academic subjects of math and science, research has not progressed to a level at which it is possible to make strong statements about which approaches produce the strongest effects on academic achievement for which children in which circumstances. In the professional development of teachers we don't have research to answer dozens of fundamental policy issues about how to best train and sustain teachers in order to enhance student learning. ESEA authorizes supplementary educational services, such as after school tutoring, for children in failing schools. Which of the available tutoring programs work best for which types of academic skill deficits? Sorry, we don't know. How about comprehensive school reform? ESEA instructs local education agencies to consider successful external models and to develop an approach to reform of their school that is derived from scientifically based research. By one count there are well over 100 comprehensive school reform models from which a local educational agency might choose. Which of these are successful? That is hard to say, because only a few have been subjected to research, and much of that research isn't sufficiently rigorous to permit strong conclusion about the effects of the models compared to business as usual, much less compared to each other.

My point, and I apologize for making it repetitiously, is that there is a lot we don't know about how learners learn and how to deliver instruction effectively.

The extent of our ignorance is masked by a "folk wisdom" of education based on the experience of human beings over the millennia in passing information and skills from one generation to the next. This folk wisdom employs unsystematic techniques. It doesn't demand scientific knowledge of mechanisms of learning. It is inefficient, and it is hit or miss. It lets us muddle through when the tasks to be learned are simple, or in a highly elitist system in which we only expect those with the most talent and most cultural support to learn advanced skills. But it fails when the tasks to be learned are complex or when we expect that no child will be left behind. The tasks to be learned in a 21st century economy are without a doubt complex, and we have decided that our education system must serve all learners well. We have to do better than we have done in the past.

Consider the analogy of medicine. For thousands of years folk remedies have been used to cure disease or relieve symptoms. But the successes of modern medicine have emerged in the last 75 years and derive from advances in the sciences of physiology and biochemistry that allowed us to understand the mechanisms of disease, and from the wide use of randomized clinical trials to determine which prevention and treatment approaches drawn from these sciences work as intended.

Or consider the analogy of agriculture. For thousands of years humans barely managed to avoid starvation by using agricultural methods that were passed from generation to generation. The abundance of inexpensive and nutritious foods that can be found at any neighborhood grocery store today result from agricultural practice that has moved from reliance on folk wisdom to reliance on science.

When we come to education, the picture is different. The National Research Council has concluded that "the world of education, unlike defense, health care, or industrial production, does not rest on a strong research base. In no other field are personal experience and ideology so frequently relied on to make policy choices, and in no other field is the research base so inadequate and little used." At the same time, the National Research Council has concluded that scientific inquiry in education is at its core the same as in all other fields. In other words, the core principles of scientific inquiry are as relevant for education as they are for medicine. There is every reason to believe that, if we invest in the education sciences and develop mechanisms to encourage evidence-based practice, we will see progress and transformation in education of the same order of magnitude as we have seen in medicine and agriculture. I believe we are at the dawn of exactly that process, and it is very exciting.

How quickly will the transformation of education into an evidence-based field occur? The actions of this Committee and the Congress as it considers the reauthorization of the research functions in the Department of Education will have a lot to do with the answer to that question.

A number of significant changes are necessary in the way we do business, so that we operate consistently with the standards of a science-based research agency. This Committee recognized this and addressed many of the important issues last year. I look forward to working with the Committee on refinements to the bill this year.

Before assuming my current position, I spent 31 years conducting research on children's learning. I am proud to say that some of that research has proven useful to educators and parents. For the last ten months, I have been focusing exclusively on OERI, first as a consultant to the Department, and since July of last year as Assistant Secretary for Research and Improvement. My testimony today is informed both by my background as a practicing scientist and by my experiences to date in trying to lead OERI.

Let me give you my reflections on how new legislation could help us move forward towards our overriding goal of making education an evidence-based field. To achieve that goal, Secretary Paige has asked me to focus on the quality, relevance, and utilization of the Department's research products. In other words, my marching orders are to fund research that is scientifically strong, that is relevant to pressing problems in education, and that will be utilized by educators and education decision makers.

Organizational structure

OERI is currently divided into four principal operational arms: 1) the National Center for Education Statistics, which conducts surveys and assessments to determine the condition of education; 2) the Office of Reform Assistance and Dissemination, which monitors ten regional educational laboratories and administers a large number of programs funded under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act; 3) the National Library of Education, which manages a physical library in the Department of Education as well as an electronic repository of documents in education called the Educational Resources Information Clearinghouse; and 4) the National Research Institutes, which are five administrative units that manage research centers at universities and grants to individual researchers.

This administrative structure is problematic. For instance, the five national research institutes have overlapping responsibilities and generate impediments to research initiatives that do not neatly fall within the purview of one of the institutes. We have, for example, a new research initiative underway in reading comprehension. Should this be the responsibility of the At-Risk Institute or the Achievement and Assessment Institute? And isn't it also an initiative of relevance to the Early Childhood Institute and the Postsecondary and Adult Learning Institute? It is difficult to assemble staff outside the Institute structure to focus on cross-cutting issues. It would be much better if we had the ability to organize and reorganize ourselves as needed to pursue the tasks at hand. This is an issue of organizational flexibility that I will address again subsequently.

We believe that new legislation should provide for organizational division into three centers responsible for research, statistics, and evaluation, each with its own Commissioner. The Director would head the agency of which the centers are a part and would provide leadership and management for the centers. In addition, the Director would take direct responsibility for a knowledge utilization branch that would work with the research, statistics, and evaluation centers to promote and make accessible the results of their work. The knowledge utilization branch would differ from current efforts in using clear standards for data quality and scientific rigor in determining what to disseminate, and promoting broad public awareness of the importance of scientific evidence in making education decisions.

Creating a culture of science

In striving to enhance the scientific quality of our work, we have focused on people. It is people who have the responsibility for conceptualizing and coordinating research programs. The recent National Research Council report on scientific inquiry in education concluded that building a scientific culture within the Department's research agency is a prerequisite for all else, and this reflects our approach as well. I think it is critically important to understand that successful research agencies, such as the NIH, embody a scientific culture because the people in the principal program management roles share the dispositions and training that characterize scientists. It is this shared culture, much more than statutes, rules, and regulations, that supports high-quality research. Scattering a few scientists among a large number of employees without the training and dispositions of scientists does not work. Several months ago I identified the relatively small number of accomplished scientists in OERI and asked them to meet regularly as a group to move our new programs forward. The day after the first meeting, I received an email from one of the older hands in attendance. He wrote that it was the first time he had actually felt like he was working in a research agency. Creating a culture in which those experiences are routine is essential.

My experience in trying to increase the number of qualified scientists at OERI highlights an area in which new legislation can be useful. We need to be able to hire scientists on excepted service positions outside the regular civil service. OERI currently has this authority, and we want to see it continued. One of the people I have recruited, a very senior distinguished scientist, was hired on an excepted service line, and it took us only two weeks. Had we not had that authority, she would not be here yet, and the critical work that she has done over the last six months would not have been accomplished. In hiring scientists, we need to move quickly and flexibly. We also need to hire scientists for limited terms, so that we will be continuously able to bring new scientists into the agency as others return to their institutions or move on to other positions. Other science agencies find this strategy invaluable.

Building a scientific culture at the Department's research agency also requires stability in leadership and the shared sense that the organization can pursue its agenda over the long term. The Office of Educational Research and Improvement has had more Assistant Secretaries and Acting Assistant Secretaries than it has had years of existence. That is not a recipe for building a strong organization. In making appointments under the new legislation, the Department intends to emphasize the scientific and management qualifications of the Director and Commissioners of the principal centers of operation and, in particular, their willingness to serve for a substantial period of time, so as to encourage stability and continuity in leadership and management of the centers.

With highly qualified scientists throughout the agency and in leadership roles, we can address the quality issues that arise from inadequate peer review, which has been a chronic problem. A 1999 study of peer review in OERI by the National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board found three panels of reviewers for the field-initiated studies competition that did not have a single member with research training and experience in the subject area of the competition. I will state the obvious: If the reviewers don't know anything about what they are reviewing, they aren't going to be able to separate the scientifically strong applications from the weak.

We hope new legislation will make it easier for us to set up standing review panels comprised of experts on particular topics, instead of using panels that can only meet once and that consist of members who are forced to be jacks of all trades. That structural feature, when combined with a selection process for peer reviewers that is carried out by staff in the agency who are themselves accomplished scientists, will have more effect in raising the quality standards than anything else we can do.

Focus

Research expenditures in the Department have been dispersed over far too many topics and projects to achieve the critical mass of scientific knowledge that leads to breakthroughs in practice. In the past, there has been very little sense of what the Department expects to accomplish with its research activities. We need to identify a limited number of core problems in education in which research has the potential to generate breakthroughs in teaching, learning, and management.

Current law forces us to support too many topics of research through specific research funding mechanisms that may not be optimal. Current law requires us to establish research priorities, but has provisions that prevent those priorities from being imposed on our field-initiated research. In other words, when we invite applications from the field for at least 25 percent of our annual appropriation, we cannot specify those topics that need to be addressed.

New legislation should allow us to hold focused research competitions in areas that are consistent with long-term priorities. The agency and the centers should set their priorities through a process that provides for obtaining and carefully considering public comments. Research funded under these priorities would not be to the exclusion of all other activities, but we could give our priority areas the resources and prolonged investment they need to generate useful and relevant results that can be used by educators to improve teaching and learning.

Flexibility

Many of the Department's research activities are legislated and regulated in a way that provides very little flexibility to respond to new opportunities and challenges, or to administer programs effectively. Under the current statute, we must have exactly five national research institutes, we must divide the money between research centers and field-initiated studies in a set proportion, we must regulate in order to direct money to a new research topic, and on and on. We need not only the flexibility to direct funds into particular areas of national need, but also the ability for our organization to evolve and adapt over time without requiring an act of Congress. In a recent workshop held at the National Academy of Sciences, a research administrator at the NIH said, "I work for an organization that can literally turn on a dime. We are not encumbered by the amount of regulation that OERI is. OERI should never be held to a quality standard until regulations are out of there."

While regulatory action is needed in some aspects of our work, strict procedures and constraints are detrimental to providing timely and useful research. At the NIH and other federal agencies, the initiation of grant competitions requires only internal review. In the Department of Education, in contrast, we are required by law to regulate separately for each competition and review. Thus we must publish what we intend to do in the Federal Register, wait for public comment, and revise in light of that comment. Establishing review criteria and standing review panels also require regulation. New legislation can release us from the heavy burden of regulation involved in new grant competitions.

These regulatory hurdles add up to six months to the time necessary to initiate funding competitions in the Department of Education compared to the NIH. We believe that the occasion for public comment through the regulatory process is when long-term priorities are being set, not when specific research funding announcements are sent to the scientific community. Releasing the research agency from these regulatory burdens for routine grant competitions would be tremendously helpful, both for managing the agency and for improving the quality of research.

Another area in which we need more flexibility is in budget and appropriations. When there are separate authorizations for particular, narrow components of our work, there are two predictable consequences. The first is that we are not able to move quickly into a new area of activity that is important. The second is increased pressure to fund work of lower than desirable quality. New legislation that would give us a consolidated budget and that would allow us the flexibility to shift funds to areas of promising research would help tremendously. We could respond quickly to new areas of research need and ensure that our funding decisions are driven entirely by the quality and relevance of the projects that are competing for awards.

Nonpartisan Research

The research activities within the Department have sometimes been seen by the outside community and Congress as more subject to political involvement than would be the case for research conducted by NIH or NSF. Regardless of the accuracy of that view, the perception that politics is driving research needs to be avoided if we expect the Department's research activities to have the force of scientific findings.

There are a number of ways that new legislation could increase the perception and reality of nonpartisanship of the research process. A consolidated budget would help because it would isolate the agency's budget for personnel and supplies from the core Department budget for those items. An agency staffed predominantly by scientists, who are committed by virtue of their training to the integrity of the research process, will contribute significantly to the goals of nonpartisanship and objectivity. Placing the responsibility for evaluation of federal education programs in a center for evaluation within the agency will provide useful distance between the program evaluation and program management functions within the Department.

The centers for research, statistics, and evaluation need to conduct their work based on sound science and independent of politics or partisanship. We look forward to working with the Committee towards legislation that supports that goal.

Finally in terms of nonpartisanship and independence, we believe it is critically important to separate the research agency from the responsibility of delivering educational programs and technical assistance. Over the years an increasing number of such activities have been assigned to OERI to the point that over two-thirds of the budget is devoted to non-research programs. The agency responsible for evaluating program effectiveness and upholding high standards of evidence cannot fulfill its role if it is directly delivering the very educational programs and technical assistance that it is supposed to evaluate. We need a solid intellectual connection between scientific research, program design, and technical assistance, but in keeping with the recent National Research Council report on scientific inquiry in education, we believe it is very important to keep these two types of activity operationally distinct.

Funding

The entire research and statistics budget of OERI for fiscal year 2002 is less than 0.5 of 1 percent of the Department's discretionary budget. The core research and dissemination budget for 2002, leaving out statistics, is only $122 million. The education research agency needs adequate resources in order to support a sustained and cumulative research effort in its areas of responsibility. I am very pleased that the President understands and is committed to investments in education research. Accordingly, he has proposed a 44 percent increase for fiscal year 2003 in our core research budget. This is an unprecedented increase. We need the support of Congress in making an appropriation consistent with the President's request so that we can move forward on the important work that needs to be done.

In an effort as large, complex, and important as this, informed, well-intentioned individuals and groups will differ on details. Let us talk about those details and compromise on those that seem to represent different routes to the same goal. However, we cannot and should not compromise on the end points. We need an invigorated agency that is capable of carrying out a coordinated, focused agenda of high quality research, statistics, and evaluation that is relevant to the educational challenges of the nation, and that has sufficient flexibility to adjust to new opportunities and problems when they arise. This is a unique and unparalleled opportunity to begin a process that will make American education an evidence-based field. If we succeed in this task, historians may look back at our actions in the next weeks and months as building the foundation for a new era in learning and teaching, an era that propelled the United States into another century of preeminence.

Thank you again for this opportunity to testify.

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