Support a Science of Performance Improvement

Abstract

iven the many challenges facing educa tion, it is natural to look to our na tion's research and development ca pacity to point the way. Even at its best, however, extant education re search today only weakly informs the complex processes involved in improv ing teaching and learning. We simply lack the necessary infrastructure to guide the transfor mations we need. This isn't due to an absence of activity. An indus try of education researchers is -identifying problems and developing new concepts. Individual educators regularly experiment with new practices in their class rooms, and school districts are constantly introducing new programs. Individual consultants and commer cial firms market new services, as state and federal policies incentivize new activity, and foundations pro mote bold new solutions seeking to reinvent the in stitutional enterprise. In short, an impressive array of individual projects focuses on many different issues. Taken as a whole, however, this enterprise isn't leading to solutions for major educational problems. We must reengineer both how we carry out education R&D and the institutional environments in which this work occurs if we want to achieve more produc tive ends. Something new and quite different must emerge if we are to confront educational challenges successfully.