Research influences policy more often than much of the academic community thinks, and more frequently every day. But its influence is less linear than researchers expect, and it is driven as much by relationships and organizational capacity as by the actual information studies produce. Research use operates through conversations, not code;…

Two recent reports contend that the introduction of school choice can promote economic development in economically distressed urban areas. The first report, published by EdChoice, presents a case study of a charter school that has, according to the report, contributed to the economic development of the city of Santa Ana, California. The second…

As part of an ongoing series of reports by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), "Learning About Learning: What Every New Teacher Needs to Know" makes broad claims about teacher education based on a limited analysis of textbooks and syllabi. The report argues that teacher education materials, specifically educational psychology…

The title is catchy and positive: "Smart, Skilled, and Striving: Transforming and Elevating the Teaching Profession." It sounds like a teacher-friendly approach to improving the perceptions and experiences of teachers working in classrooms. However, this report published by the Center for American Progress uses popular rhetoric and sound…

"The Integration Anomaly" explores a "puzzling divergence" between changes in metropolitan residential and school segregation. Based on a review of existing literature, it argues that the best way to address rising school segregation is to decouple school assignment from neighborhoods through universal school choice. The report…

This Center for American Progress report examines whether states' adoption of standards-based policies predicts low-income students' NAEP achievement trends in fourth and eighth grade math and reading throughout the 2003-2013 decade. The report claims to analyze changes across five separate two-year intervals, but it only reports findings for…

The article "Getting lost in translation" by Harris, Chapman, Muijs and Reynolds addresses the engagement of policy-makers and educational practitioners with (the results of) educational effectiveness and improvement research. In this commentary the article is discussed from the perspectives of research utilisation, the solidity of the…

This article argues for the importance of broad and on-going research to support initial or pre-service teacher education program admissions. Examples from a large initial teacher education program at one Canadian university illustrate the contributions of research to the evaluation and refinement of admission processes. These examples include…

The Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) at the University of Chicago was founded in 1990, two years after the passage of the Chicago School Reform Act that decentralized governance of the city's public schools. Since then, CCSR has distinguished itself as a unique organization, conducting research of high technical quality that is…

The tangled relationship between education research and policy has received little serious scrutiny, even as paeans to "scientifically based research" and "evidence-based practice" have become a staple of education policymaking in recent years. For all the attention devoted to the five-year-old Institute of Education Sciences,…

To ensure that its studies are relevant to policy making, the National Board on Educational Testing and Public Policy (NBETPP) follows certain guidelines. These are discussed in the hope that they will make the work of NBETPP more understandable and useful. The first guideline is that to be policy relevant, research must take account of the…

Critiques attempts to resurrect aspects of positivism and argues that the work of certain post-positivist philosophers (in particular, Toulmin's discussions of the role that purpose plays in rational decisionmaking) provides a more adequate response to the problems associated with relativism. (Author/GC)

Most of the variance in educational effectiveness studies is inexplicable in terms of influences that can be measured and controlled. Nevertheless, it is still possible to design educational policy that will function well under conditions of uncertainty. (Author/RLV)

The use of five Australian research reports in formulating policy on user choice was examined in terms of the policy development process, distribution of power among stakeholders, and the culture of decision-making organizations. Factors influencing research use were identified: the reports were commissioned, the political climate changed, and…

An overview of research on school effectiveness shows that the prescriptive messages from the research (usually in the areas of norms, tasks, and relationships in schooling) can be clarified and mitigated by administrators' precautionary messages that point out the measurement and methodological problems of such research. (JW)