For Kirsten Kainz, a researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, $35,000 buys a lot of time. Time, that is, to pursue her own research passions, to hone methodological skills, and to learn from and collaborate with mentors or other scholars doing similar work. Kainz is among hundreds of education researchers across the country…

College and university programs that prepare the nation's education researchers suffer from mission muddle, a lack of common and rigorous standards, and inadequate resources, asserts a hard-hitting report set for release. The report is all the more damning because it comes from one of the field's own, Arthur E. Levine, who stepped down in 2005…