Peer Review and the NIE/OERI Competition for Regional Educational Laboratories and National R&D Centers

Abstract

mainstream. Proposal readers were not frequently seized by the originality of a research strategy or a fresh conceptualization of an problem. There were some of these, to be sure, but not a lot. Possibly there were more in the early stages of the competition. Perhaps the peer review process itself, and the government rating systems behind it, tended to screen out less conventional approaches. But even if not exhilarating, the outcome was satisfactory. The centers we ended up with are all promising; each has a serious mission, able individuals, and a worthy plan, some worthier than others at this early stage. I feel good about the process, hopeful about the winners, and determined to do all we can to help them succeed-a judging process, I might add, in which we will use various peer review mechanisms. The situation with the regional labs is a bit more problematic. The contracts describe an ambitious agenda of work that, if satisfactorily carried out, will surely benefit American education. So far, so good. But virtually all the new labs were also old labs or close facsimiles thereof. And of the labs, while it is both conventional and true to remark that their work was uneven, I am not aware of any evidence that American education was palpably improved in consequence of their activities as a group over the years. I say this with sadness, not satisfaction, and in the fervent hope that the future will yield a different record. We on the OERI side of this contractual relationship will do our level best to bring this about. But the record remains to be established. Yet the principles of peer review remain sound, and we shall apply them throughout OERI, even to the point of requiring outside participation in the review of proposals (such as contracts let by our Center for Statistics) that heretofore were appraised only by Department staff members. But we apply them in the full awareness that peer review is a help for decisionmakers, not a substitute for them, and that the ways a peer review process is constituted and managed matter greatly, especially in this field of education where a linear extension of past thinking and familiar practices into the future is simply not good enough.