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Phoebe H. Cottingham Commissioner of the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance |
The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) is one of the four centers of the Institute of Education Sciences. NCEE is responsible for conducting rigorous evaluations of federal programs, synthesizing and disseminating information from evaluation and research, and providing technical assistance to improve student achievement through the work of the evaluation division and the knowledge utilization division that includes the Regional Educational Laboratory Program; the What Works Clearinghouse, the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), and the National Library of Education.
NCEE's evaluation division focuses on conducting rigorous impact studies of promising education programs and practices that are supported through federal funds by conducting studies that will assess the impact of education programs on academic achievement, particularly in reading, mathematics, and science. The evaluation studies use methodologies that can provide credible scientific evidence to answer questions of effectiveness.
The programs administered by NCEE through the knowledge utilization division include the Regional Educational Laboratory Program that is designed to serve the educational needs of designated regions by bringing the latest and best research and proven practices into school improvement efforts; the What Works Clearinghouse synthesizes the best evidence of the effectiveness of education programs, policies, and practices and reports on up-to-date research findings available through its website at http://www.whatworks.ed.gov; the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) the largest education database in the world that provides the public with a centralized ERIC website for searching the ERIC bibliographic databases of more than 1.1 million citations; and the National Library of Education that collects and archives information, providing special historical and current collections of Department of Education documents, a collection of journals supporting the ERIC database, research reports supporting the What Works Clearinghouse, and resources supporting current and historical federal education legislation.
Overall, the combined activities of NCEE are designed to promote the adoption of rigorous evaluation designs and methodologies in federal and non-federal education evaluation studies; provide technical assistance through the 10 regional educational laboratories on evidence-based research; and widely disseminate information on rigorously conducted education research and evaluation to state and local educational agencies, institutions of higher education, Congress, parents, teachers, media and the general public on effective programs and practices that improve student achievement. NCEE is committed to providing quick and easy access to evidence-based information through online databases such ERIC and the What Works Clearinghouse.
For more information on the work of the NCEE evaluation and knowledge utilization divisions, consult NCEE Projects and Programs.
"Evaluating What Works in Education: Better Methods and Wiser Consumers"
OECD April 19, 2004
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Recent publications:
Phoebe Cottingham, Rebecca Maynard, Matthew Stagner, ”Synthesising Evidence on the Impacts of Programmes and Policies in Education, Crime and Justice, and Social Welfare: Practical Recommendations Based on 14 Test-bed Reviews”, Evaluation and Research in Education, vol. 18, no. 1&2, 2004.
Phoebe Cottingham, Rebecca Maynard, Matthew Stagner, ”Generating and using evidence to guide public policy and practices: Lessons from the Campbell Test-bed Project”, Journal of Experimental Criminology (2005) I: 279-394
