The Regional Educational Laboratories
A very important instance of this general theme has to do with the role and function of the regional labs. I have spent considerable time over the last year getting to know the labs and their work. It is a mixed picture. Some of the labs do work that is considered quite valuable by their customers. Other labs are weaker in the quality and value of the work they conduct. So, one issue with the labs is this substantial variability in quality and relevance. A second issue is defining their core function. Is it applied research and development or is it technical assistance? Applied R & D in any field, including education, means the development of products that are intended to address needs and then doing research on their effectiveness until a final product is developed that successfully addresses the problem it was designed to solve. Some of the labs are actively involved in developing products and programs. Others develop few products. However, even for those labs that do a lot of product development, the research half of the R & D process usually gets short shrift. None of the lab products I have examined has gone through the cycle of development, research-based evaluation, and revision that constitutes the full R & D cycle. Instead, the products are developed and put into the field. Whether they work, or how well they work, is never assessed in a rigorous way. From my perspective, we do not need to use federal funds to sponsor the development and dissemination of unproven educational materials and products. Education is plagued with that from the commercial and non-profit sectors. We don't need to support the expansion of the large evidence-free zone that already exists in education through the regional lab structure.
The labs have a unique and critical role to play in regional technical assistance. The No Child Left Behind Act imposes a new and challenging set of requirements on State and local educational agencies. States and schools need a lot of help in designing and implementing assessment and accountability systems, in training teachers in how to teach reading and math, in selecting curriculum and aligning it with State standards, in recruiting and retaining highly qualified staff, and so on. The Department has been engaged in a Herculean effort to help States and schools understand and implement the new law through a wide variety of meetings, workshops, printed materials, and websites. However, the Department has few troops on the ground to provide the follow-up and local assistance that educational agencies will need when the unavoidable problems and questions arise. The labs represent a resource for that assistance that could be extremely valuable if focused and aligned with the implementation requirements of NCLB and other federal programs, and if driven by the expressed needs of the State and local educational agencies within a region. The Department's research agency is not the organizational component that should be overseeing regional technical assistance, but it will be important to write legislation that takes advantage of the labs' presence and expertise in each region to provide technical assistance that meets local needs and that structures the labs functions so that the unevenness in the quality and relevance of their work is addressed.
