Focus

Research expenditures in the Department have been dispersed over far too many topics and projects to achieve the critical mass of scientific knowledge that leads to breakthroughs in practice. In the past, there has been very little sense of what the Department expects to accomplish with its research activities. We need to identify a limited number of core problems in education in which research has the potential to generate breakthroughs in teaching, learning, and management.

Current law forces us to support too many topics of research through specific research funding mechanisms that may not be optimal. Current law requires us to establish research priorities, but has provisions that prevent those priorities from being imposed on our field-initiated research. In other words, when we invite applications from the field for at least 25 percent of our annual appropriation, we cannot specify those topics that need to be addressed.

New legislation should allow us to hold focused research competitions in areas that are consistent with long-term priorities. The agency and the centers should set their priorities through a process that provides for obtaining and carefully considering public comments. Research funded under these priorities would not be to the exclusion of all other activities, but we could give our priority areas the resources and prolonged investment they need to generate useful and relevant results that can be used by educators to improve teaching and learning.