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Introduction

Statement of Assistant Secretary Grover J. Whitehurst Before the House Subcommittee on Labor/HHS/Education Appropriations on the FY 2004 Budget Request for the Institute of Education Sciences

FOR RELEASE: March 13, 2003
Speaker frequently deviates from prepared text
Contact: Dan Langan (202)401-1576

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

The phrase "scientifically-based research" appears 111 times in the No Child Left Behind Act. It is there with good reason. If teachers, schools, and states are going to be held accountable for raising student achievement, they need the tools that will allow them to identify and utilize effective practices and programs. The only tried and true tool for generating cumulative advances in knowledge and practice is the scientific method. The application of the scientific method to physical and biological phenomena has transformed human experience in fields as disparate as medicine, agriculture, transportation, and communication. While the social, behavioral, and cognitive sciences are still in their infancy, they too have begun to exert a powerful influence on practice in fields such as welfare, criminology, clinical psychology, and developmental disabilities.

The Education Sciences Reform Act, passed unanimously in both houses of Congress and signed into law four months ago by the President, is based on the premise that education, like the other fields I have mentioned, can be transformed by the scientific method. I firmly believe that it can, and more quickly than most would think. To do so will require focused, strategic, persistent, well-managed investments in research programs that address the problems faced by education practitioners and policy-makers.

The budget of the Institute of Education Sciences is small. For FY 2003 the research and dissemination account of $139.1 million and the statistics account of $89.4 are together less than one half of one percent of the $50.2 billion discretionary budget of the U.S. Department of Education. In response to the need for more funding for education research of high quality and relevance, the President has proposed a healthy increase for research and statistics for FY 2004. The research and dissemination account would rise to $185 million, and the statistics account would rise to $95 million. We need these increases and will use them in ways that are very likely to pay back the taxpayer's investment many times over.

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