Juggling act: the politics of science in education research.

Juggling act: the politics of science in education research. Two education bills from George W. Bush's first term are longoverdue for reauthorization. One, of course, is the No Child Left BehindAct The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-110), commonly known as NCLB (IPA: /ˈnɪkəlbiː/), is a United States federal law that was passed in the House of Representatives on May 23, 2001 (NCLB NCLB No Child Left Behind (US education initiative)), passed in late 2001. The other is the Education SciencesReform Act (ESRA ESRA European Society of Regional AnaesthesiaESRA European Safety and Reliability AssociationESRA English-Speaking Residents�� Association (Mallorca)ESRA European Society of Regulatory AffairsESRA English Springer Rescue America, Inc. ), which in November 2002 replaced the Office ofEducational Research and Improvement (OERI OERI Office of Educational Research and Improvement (US Department of Education)OERI Office of Energy-Related Inventions ) with a new Institute ofEducation Sciences (IES). The first bill is already iconic: a Lexis-Nexis search coveringNCLB since its passage quickly overloads and shuts itself down. No suchdifficulties, however, hamper a hunt for stories about IES. Half of themeager mea��geralso mea��gre ?adj.1. Deficient in quantity, fullness, or extent; scanty.2. Deficient in richness, fertility, or vigor; feeble: the meager soil of an eroded plain.3. fourscore hits produced by the agency's title turn out to befor a similarly named organization in Angola. Searching instead for IESdirector Grover "Russ" Whitehurst only confirms that many highschool sports teams have a Whitehurst on the roster. It seems safe tosay that IES is operating well under the radar This article is about the magazine. For other uses, see Under the Radar (disambiguation). Under the Radar is an American magazine that bills itself as "The solution to music pollution." It features interviews with accompanying photo-shoots. of mainstream mediaattention. But as the organization responsible for putting the"scientifically based" in the scientifically based research Scientifically based research or SBR is the required standard in professional development and the foundation of academic instruction under the guidelines of No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB).[1]References1. mandated by NCLB--not to mention the home of the National Center forEducation Statistics The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), as part of the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES), collects, analyzes, and publishes statistics on education and public school district finance information in the United States; conducts studies (NCES NCES National Center for Education StatisticsNCES Net-Centric Enterprise Services (US DoD)NCES Network Centric Enterprise ServicesNCES Net Condition Event Systems ) and the National Assessment of EducationalProgress The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as "the Nation's Report Card," is the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas. (NAEP NAEP National Assessment of Educational ProgressNAEP National Association of Environmental ProfessionalsNAEP National Association of Educational ProgressNAEP National Agricultural Extension PolicyNAEP Native American Employment Program )--IES deserves attention in its own right. WithWhitehurst moving to the Brown Center on Education Policy at theBrookings Institution Brookings Institution,at Washington, D.C.; chartered 1927 as a consolidation of the Institute for Government Research (est. 1916), the Institute of Economics (est. 1922), and the Robert S. Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government (est. 1924). after his term expires this month, and as draftsfor IES reauthorization begin to make the Beltway rounds, it is time toassess the contribution of IES to the history of federal educationresearch and look ahead to its future. At best, education research is hard to do well: it studies a fieldin which all else is too rarely equal, one often driven not by facts butby values and aspiration. "Scientific" study of education atthe federal level is thus a difficult mission. Achieving it has beenmade harder still by the inability of a succession of research agenciesto withstand pressures to politicize po��lit��i��cize?v. po��lit��i��cized, po��lit��i��ciz��ing, po��lit��i��ciz��esv.intr.To engage in or discuss politics.v.tr. or gain significant funding.Lawmakers constantly tout the virtues of the National Science Foundation(NSF NSF - National Science Foundation ) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH "Not invented here." See digispeak. NIH - The United States National Institutes of Health. ) when discussing whatthey want from education research, but they have just as constantlyfailed to endow that vision with either firewalls or cash. IES, however, has a structure that heightens its autonomy frompolitical interference. Whitehurst has used the opening provided topromote a new culture of favored research that, while sometimes narrowin methodological scope, has changed the conversation in the researchcommunity about rigor rigor/rig��or/ (rig��er) [L.] chill; rigidity.rigor mor��tis? the stiffening of a dead body accompanying depletion of adenosine triphosphate in the muscle fibers. and relevance--and thus changed, at least at themargins, the research enterprise itself. Still, has education research managed to move from tracing avicious circle A Vicious Circle (1996) is a novel by Amanda Craig which dissects and satirizes contemporary British society. In particular, it describes the world of publishing -- its aspiring young authors, busy agents and opportunist literary critics. to a virtuous one? With new sets of policymakers--in theWhite House, Congress, and IES itself--taking office after the 2008elections, the real tests may be yet to come. Truth vs. Partisanship President Hoover's 1931 advisory committee on educationgrandly proclaimed the battle of "Truth vs. Partisanship."Education policy "cannot hope to rise above partisanship," itargued, "... unless mere differences of opinion, tenaciously held,are dissolved by revelations of pertinent facts established byscientific method and presented in understandable terms." TheHoover committee thus summed up two truths about federal educationresearch. First, rhetoric elevating the methodical quest for Verb 1. quest for - go in search of or hunt for; "pursue a hobby"quest after, go after, pursuelook for, search, seek - try to locate or discover, or try to establish the existence of; "The police are searching for clues"; "They are searching for the thescientific truths underlying education and its outcomes would echorepeatedly throughout the decades that followed. Second, its realitywould fall far short. Even though a desire to collate col��late?tr.v. col��lat��ed, col��lat��ing, col��lates1. To examine and compare carefully in order to note points of disagreement.2. To assemble in proper numerical or logical sequence.3. and diffuse"statistics and facts" about education motivated the creationin 1867 of the earliest national department of education, researchneither before Hoover nor since has ever achieved the status hisadvisors envisioned. Indeed, at the turn of the 19th century, the first Office ofEducation (OE), by virtue of its placement in the Interior Department,spent more effort administering the breeding of Alaskan reindeer thandriving or disseminating education research. (The reindeer would departfor greener bureaucratic pastures in 1907.) Periodic efforts to bolsterOE's clout did not take hold until after World War II. The faith inscientific research inspired by the war, afterward institutionalized in��sti��tu��tion��al��ize?tr.v. in��sti��tu��tion��al��ized, in��sti��tu��tion��al��iz��ing, in��sti��tu��tion��al��iz��es1. a. To make into, treat as, or give the character of an institution to.b. inthe likes of the NSF and the NIH, soon spread to education. In the1960s, a series of research-and-development centers and then regionaleducational laboratories was rapidly established. But soon a granderproposal was in play--a plan, as Lee Sproull and her coauthors describein Organizing an Anarchy, born "out of frustration with the failureof OE and belief in the power of scientific research." The drivingforce was Nixon aide Daniel Patrick Moynihan Noun 1. Daniel Patrick Moynihan - United States politician and educator (1927-2003)Moynihan , who had realized (he wrotein 1969) that "almost nothing is known about education." OEhad inadequate resources or autonomy to do much about this, and Moynihanconvinced the president to seek creation of a powerful independentresearch organization. Nixon's subsequent message to Congressstressed the application of "science ... to the techniques ofteaching" and outlined an independent National Institute ofEducation (NIE NIE Newspapers in EducationNIE National Intelligence Estimate (US government)NIE Newspaper In EducationNIE National Institute of Education (various countries)) that would hire a "permanent staff of outstandingscholars" from across the sciences, contract with otherresearchers, and serve as "a focus for educational research andexperimentation." As such, the president anticipated aquarter-billion-dollar annual appropriation. The BudgetBureau'sEmerson Elliott, who became acting director of NIE, says itaimed even higher: "it was formulated by Moynihan as a billiondollar agency." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Things didn't work out that way. Michael Tim-pane, NIEdirector in the Carter administration Noun 1. Carter administration - the executive under President Carterexecutive - persons who administer the law , later said the agency"inherited at best a mixed bag of research projects, was slow toorganize, inexpert at explaining itself, and soon fell from politicalgrace." As an indicator of the latter plunge, consider thatNixon's $250 million agency netted $70 mil lion in fiscal 1975 andbarely $50 million 10 years later. Across 13 years NIE had six directorsplus five acting directors, and was subject to constant reorganizationand political intrusion. President Reagan fired its entire advisoryboard, despite its members' statutory fixed terms, and his firstdirector was most noted for decrying the "false" premise"that education is a science, whose progress depends on systematicresearch ..." In 1985, however, Secretary of Education William Bennett For other people named William Bennett, see William Bennett (disambiguation).William John Bennett (born July 31, 1943) is a American conservative pundit and politician. He served as United States Secretary of Education from 1985 to 1988. merged NIEand NCES into OERI. OERI head Chester Finn, as an aide to Moynihan, hadhelped create NIE; now he helped put it out of its misery. Finn's greatest success was in revamping NCES as anauthoritative source for neutral data (see "Troublemaker,"features, Spring 2008). But the labs and centers, with which Finn wagedwar over earmarking It has been suggested that some sections of this article be split into a new article entitled Earmark (USA). , returned those attacks with political interest. Andover time, the OERI suffered from some of the same problems as NIE. Ithad frequent changes of leadership; new monies it received wereencumbered EncumberedA property owned by one party on which a second party reserves the right to make a valid claim, e.g., a bank's holding of a home mortgage encumbers property. by new duties. The agency remained politically permeable andlegislatively micromanaged. On cue, the rhetorical cycle began again: OERI needed to be"depoliticized," Rep. Major Owens Major Robert Odell Owens (born June 28, 1936) is a New York politician and a former Congressman, having represented the state's 11th Congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. (D-New York) argued in 1991,"so that ... research activities can gain the kinds of credibilityand sup port they merit." Owens favored the restoration of apowerful independent policy board; others, gazing at the NSF/NIH grail,wanted to organize around distinct "institutes" within theagency, each focused on a different educational ill. Five of these wereultimately created, but not supported. Bush OERI director ChristopherCross Christopher Cross (born Christopher Geppert on May 3 1951) is an American singer-songwriter. His works have earned him five Grammy Awards, an Oscar, and a Golden Globe. argued that the institutes would need $50 million--each. Butfunding in fiscal year 1996 totaled just $43 million. By the time reauthorization came due again, OERI was in trouble.The Clinton administration Noun 1. Clinton administration - the executive under President Clintonexecutive - persons who administer the law decision to use OERI to develop and oversee asystem of voluntary national tests drew renewed accusations that theagency had been politicized for the president's policy purposes,and the GOP-led Congress finally forced the issue out of theagency's jurisdiction; Rep. Michael Castle (R-Delaware) would sooncharge OERI with a long list of familiar sins, including "thecreeping influence of short-lived partisan or political operatives, thefunding and dissemination of questionable studies ... and ... no realsense of mission, mired mire?n.1. An area of wet, soggy, muddy ground; a bog.2. Deep slimy soil or mud.3. A disadvantageous or difficult condition or situation: the mire of poverty.v. by duplicative programs and competinginterests." In the fight between truth and partisanship,partisanship had won yet another round. The Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 Unexpectedly, though, as a new iteration of the research functiontook shape, what political scientist Terry Moecalls "the politicsof bureaucratic structure" actually worked to promote agencyinsulation. There were various reasons for this, among them the fruitfulforay into Verb 1. foray into - enter someone else's territory and take spoils; "The pirates raided the coastal villages regularly"raidencroach upon, intrude on, obtrude upon, invade - to intrude upon, infringe, encroach on, violate; "This new colleague invades my the study of reading by the National Institute of ChildHealth and Human Development and the centrality of such"scientifically based research" in the concurrent debate overthe Elementary and Secondary Education Act “Title I” redirects here. For other uses of "Title I", see Title I (disambiguation).The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) (Pub.L. 89-10, 79Stat.77, ) is a United States federal statute enacted April 111965. . President Bush praised ESRAas "an important complement" to NCLB that would"substantially strengthen the scientific basis" of classroomteaching. Likewise, the Democratic legislators so crucial to the passageof NCLB made ESRA bipartisan as well. As research became salient, so did"good" research, and as the congressional debate overeducation became inseparable from a broad endorsement of"accountability," an autonomous IES became a marker ofmembers' commitment to that cause. Accordingly, Castle's first draft of ESRA in 2000 envisioned aNational Academy for Education Research, Statistics, Evaluation, andInformation independent of the Department of Education, run by adirector serving a fixed term. Each of its three centers (for research,statistics, and evaluation) would be headed by a presidential appointee APPOINTEE. A person who is appointed or selected for a particular purpose; as the appointee under a power, is the person who is to receive the benefit of the trust or power. also serving a fixed term and under statutory stricture stricture/stric��ture/ (strik��chur) stenosis. stric��turen.A circumscribed narrowing of a hollow structure. to guaranteethat agency activities were "free from ideological agendas andundue political influence." Intriguingly, what constituted validresearch was to be mandated in law. Quantitative hypotheses, forinstance, had to be "evaluated using experimental designs in whichindividuals, entities, programs, or activities are assigned to differentconditions with appropriate controls to evaluate the effects of thecondition of interest through random assignment experiments, or otherdesigns to the extent such designs contain within-condition oracross-condition controls." The end product retained key features of this first draft. But aseries of changes was made over time. The academy was moved back intothe department, becoming the Institute of Education Sciences, butretained its independent director, who gained appointment powers overthe centers' commissioners--except, notably, at NCES. Thedefinition of "scientifically based research standards" foreducation wound up less prescriptive than in earlier drafts, but stilllimited causal claims to research designs that could bear their weight.A new advisory board (the National Board for Education Sciences, orNBES NBES Narrow Beam Echo Sounder ) was given formal approval powers over the institute'slong-term research priorities and its mandated strengthened peer-reviewprocess. And for the first time, a majority of the board was to becomposed of researchers, rather than practitioners or other consumers ofresearch (see Figure 1). [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] The first director of IES, moving over from OERI, was RussWhitehurst. Whitehurst's strong academic credentials broadcast hismethodological predilections. He came to the Bush administration fromthe quantitatively minded psychology department at SUNY-Stony Brook witha long scholarly record that included stints editing research journalsand serving as academic director of the Merrill-Palmer Institute. Perthe mission statement of the latter, IES would be led by someonededicated to "evidence-based programs and interventions" andthe models that probed them. The First Authorization Cycle In the fall of 2006, IES received what an Education Week surveytermed "mixed, but mostly positive, grades"; and the follow-uphere likewise found widespread praise, leavened leav��en?n.1. An agent, such as yeast, that causes batter or dough to rise, especially by fermentation.2. An element, influence, or agent that works subtly to lighten, enliven, or modify a whole.tr.v. with caution. All sidesagree that the six years since ESRA was passed have been consequentialones for education research. Fans of IES tend to praise a new sense of agency independence and,not unrelated, a renewed emphasis on scientific rigor. IES has morestructural autonomy than its predecessors; and below the surface theagency's authority is also much improved, former OERI head KentMcGuire says, in ways that are "not sexy but critical." In onetelling shift, the director shot up the bureaucratic ranks to Level IIon the executive schedule. That placed the position just one rungbeneath the secretary and, by no coincidence, at the same rank as thedirector of NSE NSE - Network Software Environment: a proprietary CASE framework from Sun Microsystems. (Assistant secretaries, by contrast, are normally atLevel IV.) The ability to hire personnel outside civil serviceconstraints and to roll funds over multiple fiscal years has beenequally helpful. So too has language in ESRA that gives the directorexplicit authority to prepare and publish research and evaluationreports "without the approval of the Secretary or any other officeof the Department." Thus if, as Finn argues, "three things matter in Washington,in terms of autonomy: the ability to manage your own money; to manageyour own people; and to manage your own words," IES has madeimportant strides on all three fronts. One insider notes the dramaticcontrast between the "most partisan Department of Education I haveseen since 1988, and the most independent research and statsagency." IES has taken advantage of this independence to drive changes inexpectations and values in the research community. The agency'sgrant-review process was revamped to one Whitehurst says was"explicitly modeled on NIH," emphasizing separation of thepeer review and contracting processes and requiring agency reports to bepeer reviewed before publication. The change in vocabulary has beenstriking: loud language touting the "rigorous scientificstandards" set forth in statute emanates constantly from IES,relentlessly pressing the importance of randomized ran��dom��ize?tr.v. ran��dom��ized, ran��dom��iz��ing, ran��dom��iz��esTo make random in arrangement, especially in order to control the variables in an experiment. , controlled trials asthe "gold standard" for judging whether and how a givenintervention is effective. The online What Works Clearinghouse (WWC WWC Worldwide ClassroomWWC Walla Walla College (Walla Walla, WA USA)WWC World Water CouncilWWC Women's World Cup (soccer)WWC Workshop on Workload CharacterizationWWC Washington Wheat Commission )judges "what works" with regard to curricular interventions onthis basis alone. Blasted by high-volume endorsements of experimentaldesign, researchers may be forgiven for feeling like Manuel Noriega For other people named Noriega, see Noriega (disambiguation). Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno (born February 11, 1934<ref name="c" />) was a Panamanian general and the de facto military dictator of Panama from 1983[1] inhis 1989 Panama compound. Some, of course, are clapping along to that beat; thequantitatively minded choir to which IES could preach has been a growingpart of the education research community. But there are many othersdubious of what they see as the myopic my��o��pi��a?n.1. A visual defect in which distant objects appear blurred because their images are focused in front of the retina rather than on it; nearsightedness. Also called short sight.2. focus of IES. For them, the IESmantra of "transformation" via "evidence-basedintervention" amounts (ironically enough) to a sort of faith-basedprogram, an unrealistically dogmatic view of what should count asresearch. Instead, they argue, as former OERI head Sharon Robinson putsit, "you have to have a range of methods and rigor in allmethodologies" and that an exclusive approach created mistrust inlarge segments of the education establishment, instead of"enlarging the political army." Further, KnowledgeAlliance's Jim Kohlmoos argues that "the irony is that as youinsulate [the agency]--which is a positive thing, in my opinion--you runthe risk of becoming less relevant" to the world of practice. Thisconnection, of course, is one of the things that WWC is designed toenhance; that it is not uniformly seen as doing so remains a concern.(Recently a parallel, and peppier, site titled Doing What Works hasarisen in the department--not in IES, though it uses IES research.) Suggesting these views had at least some traction on the Hill,early House drafts of NCLB reauthorization tinkered with the standardfor scientifically based research, weakening its focus on experiments. Arecent proposal for reauthorization approved by the IES advisory board,the National Board for Education Sciences, tweaks the language backagain to reemphasize that causal claims can be made "only inwell-designed and implemented random assignment experiments, whenfeasible." Even those who resent that focus must concede that IES practiceswhat it preaches. The agency has rarely parroted the lines scripted byits political bosses or industrial heavyweights: Whitehurst was carefulto cast caveats upon education secretary Margaret Spellings'sclaims that rising student test scores in 2005 offered "proof"of NCLB's effectiveness, adding in 2007 that widely divergent statestandards for "proficiency" in fact made it hard to judgeNCLB's impact. While the administration has strongly pushedphonics-based reading curricula, IES gave positive marks to the rivalReading Recovery program and later reported ambivalent if stillpreliminary results for Reading First (a broader report on this topic isdue in late 2008). And WWC found in 2007 that expensively touted mathtexts and test-preparation software had little effect on studentoutcomes: textbook superpower Houghton Mifflin's elementarymathematics Elementary mathematics consists of mathematics topics frequently taught at the primary and secondary school levels. The most basic are arithmetic and geometry. The next level is probability and statistics, then algebra, then (usually) trigonometry and pre-calculus. curriculum, for instance, was "found to have nodiscernible effects on ... achievement." Such insulation is good for the perceived integrity of theinstitute. Even congressional Democrats, angered by what they see as thegross politicization of science The politicization of science occurs when government, business or interest groups use legal or economic pressure to influence the findings of scientific research which differ from the majority view, or influence the way the research is disseminated, reported or interpreted. agencies under the Bush administration,make an exception for IES. But being apolitical a��po��lit��i��cal?adj.1. Having no interest in or association with politics.2. Having no political relevance or importance: claimed that the President's upcoming trip was purely apolitical. takes special politicalskill. Otherwise--as with the initial Reading First report--it runs therisk of antagonizing potential allies, and of cooling ardor ar��dor?n.1. Fiery intensity of feeling. See Synonyms at passion.2. Strong enthusiasm or devotion; zeal: "The dazzling conquest of Mexico gave a new impulse to the ardor of discovery"forinstitute initiatives and departmental appropriations (see Figure 2).(Reading First funds have been cut from $1 billion to $393 million to,possibly, zero in 2009, and IES's own funding has been flat sincefiscal 2004.) It can mean, too, that the institute does not participatein shaping legislation with important ramifications ramificationsnpl → Auswirkungen plfor research, suchas the NCLB reauthorization. [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] Over time, however, as Whitehurst's tenure lengthenedvis-a-vis latecomers to the administration, his role of honest ifprickly broker has garnered more deference. Time, too, has helped softenthe edges between Whitehurst's focus on quantitative experimentalmethodology and those pushing more immediate "relevance" overhis brand of "rigor." Sharon Robinson concedes,"They've come a long way toward lowering the guard andrighting the rhetoric," and Whitehurst himself seemed to bechanneling his inner Robinson in February, when he told an AmericanEnterprise Institute The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is a conservative think tank, founded in 1943. According to the institute its mission "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism — limited government, conference that education is "richlycontextual and multivariate" and that research should encompass a"panoply pan��o��ply?n. pl. pan��o��plies1. A splendid or striking array: a panoply of colorful flags.See Synonyms at display.2. of existing techniques." Still, moving toward reauthorization, IES must deal with concernsfrom at least two corners of the education research constituency. On oneside are partisans of the regional centers and labs first created in the1960s. Under IES the centers have seen their funding cut and the scopeof their research tightened; the labs have been pushed to supplementwith experimental research their traditional role of local disseminationand "rapid response" technical assistance. Whitehurst arguesthat while Congress should determine what it wants to know, IES shoulddetermine how to find that out. But the labs, especially, originally setup to maximize local political support, have always done so; and theircustomers, officials used to receiving quick customized help, have notalways been pleased with the changes at IES. Indeed, the Democraticaddendum to ESRA notes that protecting the regional system was "acritical priority." Those members are now in the majority. Coming from another angle are those who fear for the independenceof the National Center for Education Statistics. Recall that the head ofNCES differs from other IES commissioners in being a Senate-confirmedpresidential appointee with a fixed term. The idea is to give the jobadditional status and independence, even from IES, placing yet one morebarrier between politics and data. As a guardian of statisticalinformation, NCES holds its main aim to be the integrity and credibilityof that data; it should have little to say about its analysis. But the managerial messiness of this has never pleased Whitehurst,and IES has sat rather heavily astride a��stride?adv.1. With a leg on each side: riding astride.2. With the legs wide apart.prep.1. On or over and with a leg on each side of.2. both NCES inputs (especiallyhiring) and outputs (its publications). NBES's proposedreauthorization language goes further, making the NCES commissioner anappointee of the IES director, though dismissible only for cause.Advisory board chair Robert Granger argues that this is "a morerational model," creating efficient lines of accountability andensuring that the director and commissioner will be compatible.Whitehurst suggests that having a presidential appointee at NCES couldprove more problematic, not less, in terms of partisan influence,without the director to buffer the commissioner from political winds. One could foresee circumstances in which this would be true. But ingeneral the proposal runs counter to the long-standing recommendationsof the National Research Council and its guide to Principles andPractices for a Federal Statistical Agency. Certainly the heft of apresidential appointment is useful to the NCES commissioner inbureaucratic dealings. More broadly, statistical agencies, in this view,are qualitatively different, not to be treated, as Elliott puts it, as"just another government agency." Even such a fan ofmanagerial efficiency as the Office of Management and Budget The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), formerly the Bureau of the Budget, is an agency of the federal government that evaluates, formulates, and coordinates management procedures and program objectives within and among departments and agencies of the Executive Branch. , whoseprogram evaluation Program evaluation is a formalized approach to studying and assessing projects, policies and program and determining if they 'work'. Program evaluation is used in government and the private sector and it's taught in numerous universities. gives both IES and NCES coveted cov��et?v. cov��et��ed, cov��et��ing, cov��etsv.tr.1. To feel blameworthy desire for (that which is another's). See Synonyms at envy.2. To wish for longingly. See Synonyms at desire. (and rare) grades of"effective," feels that "real and perceivedindependence" is best served by the current system. The drive by IES for managerial (and budgetary?) control also seeksto alter the complicated relationship between NCES and the NationalAssessment Governing Board Noun 1. governing board - a board that manages the affairs of an institutionboard - a committee having supervisory powers; "the board has seven members" (NAGB NAGB National Assessment Governing BoardNAGB National Art Gallery of the Bahamas ), which oversees the NationalAssessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAGB has autonomy regardingthe conduct and presentation of NAEP, but proposed changes would givemost of that power to NCES, which would itself be under the thumb ofIES. NCES would be happy to get the envisioned authority in the proposedlanguage, if limits on its own autonomy were not part of the deal, butthe current system is intentionally uncomfortable, dividing authority ina way that is itself insulating. Looking Ahead It seems unlikely, given current sentiment on the Hill, that thesechanges will receive legislative sanction. But there will be plenty oftime for the debate to play out. Few expect much progress on ESRAreauthorization even in 2009, pending movement of the equally late NCLBreauthorization. As that approaches, it is worth rememberingWhitehurst's hopeful testimony in 2002 that "we are close to apoint where the right investment in the right structure could get usclose to a tipping point The point in time in which a technology, procedure, service or philosophy has reached critical mass and becomes mainstream. See network effect. See also tip and ring. , where education becomes an evidence-basedfield." Has that occurred? The quick descent to technical minutiae mi��nu��ti��a?n. pl. mi��nu��ti��aeA small or trivial detail: "the minutiae of experimental and mathematical procedure"Frederick Turner. in the discussions alreadyoccurring on reauthorization actually bodes well on this point. Earlymurmurings suggested the new ESRA could be passed, as a noncontroversialmeasure, in order to clear the congressional decks for NCLB. Thisdidn't happen, of course, but even informal designation as"noncontroversial" suggests IES has come a long way. There arefew questions about its basic structure. Legislators seem serious aboutavoiding confirmation of a partisan hack to the IES directorship, whenthat job opens up. So far, insulation remains good politics. But politics lurk close. In a months-long tussle between IES andCongress over the evaluation of Upward Bound Upward Bound is a program of the United States Department of Education, the goal of this which is to give high school students who are in categories that make them less likely to attend college (such as low income, parents who didn't attend college, and living in rural areas) the , IES insisted that a robusttest of whether the program made a difference to students required acontrol group--students eligible for but not served by it. This meantsome students would be recruited for Upward Bound but deniedparticipation. And lawmakers decried that as unethical and"discriminatory," even comparing it, ominously (ifinaccurately), to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiments. In early2008 the evaluation was canceled. Whitehurst called the legislative intervention "a terrificmistake." On scientific grounds, he was right. But as he conceded,"We produced some of these problems for ourselves," in part bycentering on a single kind of evaluative procedure and by failing toconsult with the advocacy community and Congress in advance beforegrappling with a popular program. Will "the Upward Bound problem ... be contained to UpwardBound," as Whitehurst later insisted? Probably so, but itnonetheless showed how easily breached is agency autonomy when itsexercise roils partisan waters. Further, if a director as experienced asWhitehurst could stumble into this sort of controversy, how will hisgreener successor fare? Some of Whitehurst's effectiveness, andleeway, is a matter of longevity and related learning (on all sides)that will have to be repeated after the transition. Given ESRA'stight association with NCLB, the crumbling consensus around the latterwill bring new pitfalls to navigate. Whatever November's outcome, January 2009 will bring majorchanges to Washington. It is not clear that it is worth betting thestructural house on things having changed for good. Indeed, in purelypractical terms, the IES budget is not big enough to tip the field ofeducation research on its own. Structure matters, but so do resources;and the politics of knowledge is no different from politics as awhole--defined, as Harold Laswell put it long ago, by who gets what,when, and how. By this standard, IES is distinctly undercapitalized UndercapitalizedA business has insufficient capital to carry out its normal functions.undercapitalizedOf, relating to, or being a firm that has insufficient long-term equity to support its assets. (seeFigure 3). The institute's funding (for research and dissemination)is up by a third compared to the final days of OERI, to $160 million orso; that said, that level was achieved in fiscal 2004 and has hardlybudged since. The bipartisan NCLB commission proposed doubling thatamount. And in its draft reauthorization bill, NBES proposes that IESbecome a $1 billion agency as of fiscal 2009, finally meeting PatMoynihan's 1970 vision. Of course, a billion 1970 dollars equatesto some $5.3 billion today. Some advocates argue that to parallelcorporate research-and-development budgets the figure should really be 2percent of overall investment, or something like $10 billion. [FIGURE 3 OMITTED] That those numbers sound Utopian speaks to the need for newpolitical dexterity at IES that also maintains its scientific integrity.Still, Whitehurst and IES can take pride in having made a solid start.If the randomized-controlled-trials approach was oversold OversoldIn technical analysis, it is a market in which the volume of selling that has occurred is greater than the fundamentals justify.Notes:It is the opposite of overbought. , this hasserved to move the field by force, further and faster, towardrecognizing the need for rigorous research standards generally. Theunstinting focus on promoting scientific rigor, even through a singlelens, must thus be viewed as broadly positive. And if these changes are,ultimately, at the margins, in American politics that is where mostchange occurs. The institution is in place: the next administration,next Congress, and next director will have the chance toinstitutionalize in��sti��tu��tion��a��lizev.To place a person in the care of an institution, especially one providing care for the disabled or mentally ill.in it. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Andrew Rudalevige is associate professor of political science atDickinson College. This article is adapted from "Structure andScience in Education Research" in Frederick Hess, ed., WhenResearch Matters (Harvard Education Press, 2008).