Nonpartisan Research
The research activities within the Department have sometimes been seen by the outside community and Congress as more subject to political involvement than would be the case for research conducted by NIH or NSF. Regardless of the accuracy of that view, the perception that politics is driving research needs to be avoided if we expect the Department's research activities to have the force of scientific findings.
There are a number of ways that new legislation could increase the perception and reality of nonpartisanship of the research process. A consolidated budget would help because it would isolate the agency's budget for personnel and supplies from the core Department budget for those items. An agency staffed predominantly by scientists, who are committed by virtue of their training to the integrity of the research process, will contribute significantly to the goals of nonpartisanship and objectivity. Placing the responsibility for evaluation of federal education programs in a center for evaluation within the agency will provide useful distance between the program evaluation and program management functions within the Department.
The centers for research, statistics, and evaluation need to conduct their work based on sound science and independent of politics or partisanship. We look forward to working with the Committee towards legislation that supports that goal.
Finally in terms of nonpartisanship and independence, we believe it is critically important to separate the research agency from the responsibility of delivering educational programs and technical assistance. Over the years an increasing number of such activities have been assigned to OERI to the point that over two-thirds of the budget is devoted to non-research programs. The agency responsible for evaluating program effectiveness and upholding high standards of evidence cannot fulfill its role if it is directly delivering the very educational programs and technical assistance that it is supposed to evaluate. We need a solid intellectual connection between scientific research, program design, and technical assistance, but in keeping with the recent National Research Council report on scientific inquiry in education, we believe it is very important to keep these two types of activity operationally distinct.