Educators trying to make choices to help students and schools meet high standards can become overwhelmed by the amount of education research. It can also be hard to identify research with credible and reliable evidence to use in making informed decisions.
As an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) was created in 2002 to be a central and trusted source of scientific evidence for what works in education. What does that mean?
- Central. We want to be the place you turn to when you want to know about education research. We have reviewed thousands of studies on hundreds of education programs, products, practices, and policies.
- Trusted. We strive to provide accurate information on education research. All of our procedures and policies are publicly available, and our goal is to provide transparent reviews of the research literature.
- Scientific evidence. In order to tell you what works, we conduct thorough reviews of the research literature and critically assess the evidence presented.
- What works. This website delivers information from our reviews through the “Find What Works” tool, pulling findings from multiple reports, a searchable database of research studies we have reviewed, and publications we have written on our reviews.
The WWC is administered by Joy Lesnick, the IES project officer, through a contract with Mathematica Policy Research, a nationally recognized leader in education research and in rigorous reviews of scientific evidence. Below are links to key contributors to the WWC.