The Center for Education at the National Research Council

The mission of the Center for Education at the National Research Council (CFE) is to promote evidence-based policy analysis that is both responsive and anticipatory: responsive to government's and other stakeholders' program and research interests and anticipatory of long-term challenges, opportunities, and needs that affect the future of education research and policy priorities.

The Center is ideally situated to initiate programs that can make a difference in education. By engaging the unique strength of the National Academies to bring together national, state, and local leaders, the Center is poised to address critical national issues in education research, policy, and practice.

Evidence-Based Education

This PowerPoint presentation by Dr. Grover Whitehurst outlines the U. S. Department of Education's conception of evidence-based educational practice. Dr. Whitehurst explains the difference between professional wisdom and empirical evidence and why both are important in developing evidence-based education. This presentation may be found at the link above.

Scientific Research in Education

Richard J. Shavelson and Lisa Towne, Editors
Center for Education
Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education
National Research Council
National Academy Press
Washington, D.C.

Scientific Research in Education outlines in detail the issues surrounding the need for quality research, how to conduct it, and how to use its findings and describes the role of quality research in education: At its core, scientific inquiry is the same in all fields. Scientific research, whether in education, physics, anthropology, molecular biology, or economics, is a continual process of rigorous reasoning supported by a dynamic interplay among methods, theories, and findings” (NRC 2002).

Scientific Research in Education can be read online or ordered at the link above.

Users' Guide to Evidence-Based Education  

This Users' Guide was published by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education and was prepared by the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy. The Guide provides simple guidance for educators in how to understand and apply the principles of scientifically-based research. More information about Scientifically-Based Research and the Users' Guide may be found at the link above.

Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE)

A new professional organization has been established to help support a growing community of researchers committed to examining cause-and-effect relations important for educational practice.
The mission of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) is to advance and disseminate research on the causal effects of education interventions, practices, programs, and policies. As support for researchers who are focused on questions related to educational effectiveness, the Society aims to: 1) increase the capacity to design and conduct investigations that have a strong base for causal inference, 2) bring together people investigating cause-and-effect relations in education, and 3) promote the understanding and use of scientific evidence to improve education decisions and outcomes.

What Works Clearinghouse

On an ongoing basis, the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) collects, screens, and identifies studies of the effectiveness of educational interventions (programs, products, practices, and policies). The Clearinghouse reviews the studies that have the strongest design and reports on the strengths and weaknesses of those studies against the WWC Evidence Standards.

The WWC does not endorse any interventions nor does it conduct field studies. The WWC releases study, intervention, and topic reports. A study report rates individual studies and designs to give you a sense of how much you can rely on research findings for that individual study. An intervention report provides all findings that meet WWC Evidence Standards for a particular intervention. Each topic report briefly describes the topic and each intervention that the WWC reviewed.

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