The recent high-profile data-confidentiality fights in Arizona and Los Angeles have researchers worried that access to educators may become a difficult path. In the course of a decadelong federal lawsuit over English-language-learner programs in Arizona, lawyers for state schools chief Tom Horne subpoenaed the raw data from three studies…

The author reports on the U.S. Department of Education's "What Works Clearinghouse" that goes beyond "gold standard" research and sets standards for accepting other types of studies. As part of the Institute of Education Sciences' push to make research more relevant to educators, the federal clearinghouse has devised standards by which it can…

The author reports on a review of state policies by researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, which raises questions about the validity of the use of home-language surveys as a step to identify students eligible for special help in learning English. While it's ubiquitous in schools across the country, the practice of educators'…

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…