A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

I. Introduction

This conference was convened by the U.S. Department of Education's National Educational Research Policy and Priorities Board (NERPPB) and Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) to bring together leaders in representatives from a dozen or more research planning efforts underway federal agencies and professional and scientific organizations. The purpose was to put those efforts in communication with one another and with the educators and policymakers who could use the fruits of educational research to enhance learning and suggest priorities and collaborations for future work. The agenda and list of attendees are appendices A and B, respectively.

It was the sense of the conference organizers that this is a time of both risk and opportunity for educational research. Educators and policy makers are eager to have clear evidence and conclusions from research upon which to build more effective policies and practices. However, they are not convinced that education research can produce such information on a timely and consistent basis, and they may well punish or abandon the enterprise if it does not or worse, does not choose to respond to their needs. That said, the opportunities for progress that the conference identified or accelerated seemed numerous and feasible:

• to strengthen mutual capacity for identifying priorities and setting agendas;

• to establish appropriate and consistent standards for research designs and methods, as well as quality assurance processes;

• to begin to synthesize and aggregate findings among programs of study;

• to identify specific steps to strengthen the educational research system its institutions and its people;

• to build communities of scholars and new connections between the worlds of research, policy, practice, and the public to create, eventually, a stronger culture of learning, a voracious appetite for knowledge to improve education among all parties to this dialogue; and

• to begin to identify the education research planning responsibilities most appropriate to each principal agency and institution beginning with NERPPB and OERI but extending to the other significant participants as well.

The conference delved into the nature and significance of each of these challenges, and began to discover a framework to guide joint efforts to address them in educational research plans and programs.
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[Acknowledgments]

[II. Summary of the Proceedings]