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…

As value-added research designs gain in popularity and undergo increasing scrutiny, experts are beginning to wave cautionary flags about how best to make use of them in education. Value-added techniques for measuring student achievement appeal to administrators and policymakers at all levels of education because they quantify the gains that…

In comments on the proposed federal guidelines for stimulus funds, some researchers say there's no evidence for the policies touted. Among education researchers, one complaint about the U.S. Department of Education under former President George W. Bush was that it relentlessly promoted "scientific research in education," while at the…

Intrigued by the interviews with high school valedictorians that the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer publishes this time each year, researcher E. Ann York decided to gather up three years' worth of its stories to look for any gender differences in the aspirations of these highest-achieving local students. Were boys more likely to strive for careers…

When researchers from the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) met with Boston secondary school teachers three years ago, the teachers told them they had a problem. Students struggled to understand their textbook lessons because they continually tripped up on--or glossed over--the academic words they came across. The researchers'…

This article reports on the results of a groundbreaking brain-imaging study suggesting that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder stems from delayed brain maturation. Implicit in some of the news coverage was the hopeful idea that many--even most--children eventually grow out of the disorder. But that's not exactly true, according to a…

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…

Researchers looking to tap into the treasure troves of long-term student-achievement data that states and districts are starting to pile up say their efforts are increasingly running up against a decades-old federal law designed to protect student privacy. "More and more people are starting to look into questions of the federal…

The author of this article reports in late January 2006, a group of scholars announced the formation of a federally-backed professional society that will focus solely on advancing scientifically rigorous studies in education. The society, which is known as Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, has caused ripples of controversy among…

Students learn more from certified teachers than they do from uncertified teachers, even when the uncredentialed teachers are Teach For America recruits from some of the nation's top colleges, a Stanford University research team concludes from a study of test scores in Houston. Findings from the study, which researchers presented in Montreal on…

This article examines the use of "mixed methods" research in education--studies that blend different research strategies. Although various methodologies have always been part of a researcher's toolkit, much of the renewed attention to that strategy is a reaction to the U.S. Department of Education's current emphasis on using randomized field…

Five-and-a-half years ago, against the advice of his wife and his academic colleagues, Samuel C. Stringfield stepped out of his ivory tower. The then-50-year-old education researcher, a nationally known expert on school improvement, became a member of the Baltimore city school board. Until the time came when he left the board and the Center for…