Inside School Research: IES Plans Major Study of Stimulus Spending:
"A big criticism so far of the U.S. Department of Education's proposals for spending economic-stimulus dollars has been that they don't include a strong evaluation component. How can we learn from all those government-subsidized efforts to turn around failing schools, open up charter schools, build longitudinal data systems, and institute merit-pay programs for teachers and principals if we don't study them? The fear is that the nation will never again have an opportunity like this to study so much experimentation going on in so many places.
Well, it turns out the department is planning to seriously study those efforts after all. In an interview yesterday, the department's research czar, John Q. Easton, told me his agency is developing a multilayered, crosscutting, multimethod study of states' stimulus-powered reform efforts."
"A big criticism so far of the U.S. Department of Education's proposals for spending economic-stimulus dollars has been that they don't include a strong evaluation component. How can we learn from all those government-subsidized efforts to turn around failing schools, open up charter schools, build longitudinal data systems, and institute merit-pay programs for teachers and principals if we don't study them? The fear is that the nation will never again have an opportunity like this to study so much experimentation going on in so many places.
Well, it turns out the department is planning to seriously study those efforts after all. In an interview yesterday, the department's research czar, John Q. Easton, told me his agency is developing a multilayered, crosscutting, multimethod study of states' stimulus-powered reform efforts."