The 1994 reauthorization of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) introduced significant changes in the structure of federal support for educational research, development, and statistics. After more than 3.5 years of experience with these changes, it is time to assess the results of the new approach. Rather than looking only at recent developments at OERI, this essay tries to provide a broad chronological re-examination of federal strategies for supporting educational research, development, and statistics. By placing the recent changes at OERI in a historical context, it becomes possible to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the current reorganization as well as to discover the insights and guidance past experiences may provide. The discussion concentrates on the period after 1960 and focuses heavily on the experiences of the National Institute for Education and OERI. The following chapters are included: (1) "Federal Educational Research and Statistics before World War II"; (2) "Expanding Federal Educational Research in the 1950s"; (3) "Educational Research and the Great Society"; (4) "Creation and Evolution of the National Institute of Education"; (5) "The Reagan Administration and the Challenge to Federal Involvement in Educational Research and Development"; (6) "Changes during the Bush Administration"; (7) "The 'New' OERI"; and (8) "Concluding Observations." Three appendixes contain responses to this report from the Government and Professional Liaison Committee of the American Educational Research Association, the Organization of Research Centers, and the National Research Center for Improving Student Learning an Achievement in Mathematics and Science. (Contains 205 endnotes.) (SLD)