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Information Services retails information when people call in, write in, or dial us up on their computers. Funds for small improvements of the technological sort are included in our request, so too are overdue improvements in the Department's library, which is on such short rations this year it can acquire few new books or periodicals.

That is it. We are seeking to grow, the President asked us to grow. But I think it is for good and useful purposes. We think we are giving the Congress and the taxpayer a reasonably good return on the funds we are spending now and hope to do so again in fiscal year 1989.

Thank you for your patience. I would be happy to respond to your questions.

[The information follows:]

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1977-1981

1974-1977

1973-1974

1972-1973

1971-1972

1969-1971

1968-1969

Assistant Secretary for Educational Research and Improvement, and Counselor to the Secretary, U.S. Department of Education

Professor of Education and Public Policy,
Vanderbilt University (on leave, 1985 to
present)

: Legislative Director, Office of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

: Research Associate in Governmental Studies, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.

: Counsel to the American Ambassador to India

: Special Assistant to the Governor for
Education, Commonwealth of Massachusetts

: Director of Policy Analysis, University of
Massachusetts

: Staff Assistant to the President, The White House, Washington, D.C.

: Research Assistant, and Assistant to the
Director of Programs in Administration,
Harvard Graduate School of Education

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1985 (May)

1974 (January)

1971-1972 and 1967-1968

1965-1966

: Visiting lecturer under the auspices of the United States Information Service (U.S.I.S.) in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Fukuoka, Japan, and in Seoul and Pusan, Korea

:

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Organizer and speaker in U.S.I.S. seminar on "Issues in Contemporary Higher Education," Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, India

: Course assistant, guest lecturer, and section
leader at Harvard University for Professors

Daniel P. Moynihan and Nathan Glazer;
courses in "Urban Social Policy", "Social
Science and Social Policy", and "The
Politics of Education".

: Intern teacher of social studies, Newton High School, Newton, Massachusetts

Intern teacher of history, The Phillips Exeter
Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire

: Graduate, The Colorado Outward Bound School

Extensive travel in the U.S.A., Europe, Asia, Africa, and Pacific Author of numerous books and articles

Participant and speaker at many meetings, seminars, conferences, and hearings

CURRENT

MEMBERSHIPS

:

Phi Delta Kappa, Harvard University Chapter
Cleveland Conference

Higher Education Colloquium

American Educational Research Association
Committee for the Free World

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Statement by

Chester E. Finn, Jr.

Assistant Secretary for Research and Improvement
on the President's Fiscal 1989 Budget for
Education Research and Statistics

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

We appreciate the opportunity to appear before you to discuss the 1989 budget for Education Research and Statistics.

Fiscal Year 1989 Request

In 1867, Congress created a fledgling Federal education agency and directed it to provide the Nation with regular information on "the condition and progress of education." The Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) bears the primary responsibility within the current Education Department for carrying out this oldest and most central element of the Federal role in American education.

For 121 years, OERI and its predecessors have gathered, analyzed, and disseminated information about education. On behalf of the President, I come before you today to request the resources necessary to carry on and improve upon this long tradition.

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We are requesting $81 million for 1989, which is $13.5 million more than the $67.5 million appropriated for 1988. We propose to use the $81 million, distributed as shown in Chart 1, to investigate many issues of concern to virtually everyone involved in or affected by · better education; to continue repairing the Nation's education statistics base; to track the education reform movement, to help us better understand "what works" in education; and, through our publishing and dissemination activities, to get more such information into the hands of parents, practicing educators, policymakers, and other education-minded Americans.

It is fitting that our request comes just weeks before the fifth anniversary of the publication of A Nation at Risk, the report which helped spark massive reform efforts in States and localities across the country. Education continues to rank high on the public agenda. Citizens consistently point to the quality of schooling as a domestic issue of overriding importance, and elected officials (and aspirants) are sensitive to their concerns. Indeed, America's desire for excellence in education has probably never been keener.

Education changes begun in the past few years have wrought some distinct and noteworthy improvements in how some schools are run and children are educated. But these accomplishments pale in the face of what remains undone. Young people continue to abandon their schooling at unacceptably high rates, yet we are only now beginning to collect national dropout data on a regular basis. School reformers are acting quickly to implement sweeping changes that may remain in place for decades, changes such as increasing

graduation requirements, reinvigorating the core curriculum, and restructuring certification practices and reward systems for teachers, to name but a few. Yet we frequently lack the information needed to evaluate either the immediate impact or long-range effects of these policies. Indeed, the knowledge we have gained about good practice is sometimes fragmentary, the research findings inconclusive, and the statistical data incomplete.

The context of our request is also worthy of note. In 1985, this Administration reorganized the National Institute of Education, the National Center for Education Statistics, and the Center for Libraries and Education Improvement into a single organization, the "new" Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Secretary Bennett and I had several goals for OERI, among which were: to improve the Nation's statistical information on education, filling gaps in currently available data; to provide reliable and valid information about education outcomes and quality, as well as about what works in education; to enlarge the intellectual capital of education by investing in well-chosen, high-quality studies of important issues and problems; and to improve the dissemination and use of education information among education practitioners, policymakers, and the general public.

We have since made significant progress in repairing our statistics and assessment capabilities, thanks in part to funding increases you and your colleagues in the Congress have granted the Center for Education Statistics. The funds we request for the Center in fiscal year 1989 will help us further develop the statistics and assesssment rejuvenation process begun in 1985 and signifcantly advanced in 1988.

We have made much more limited progress to date in the research, improvement, and dissemination functions of OERI. We have been able, for example, to establish several research "mini-centers" to investigate teaching and learning in the key content areas of math, science, and elementary education; and, in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts, we have established a kindred center in art and another one in literature. We are also well on our way to establishing two larger centers in fiscal year 1988, one to study leadership in education and one to examine education technology. We have created and disseminated a variety of readable publications, such as What Works, What Works II, and our "Researchin-Brief" series, which translate research findings into layman's terms and are directed at parents and educators. And we have produced both more practitioner oriented publications, like our Principal Selection Guide and Dealing with Dropouts, and more policymaker directed items, such as Japanese Education Today and What's Happening in Teacher Testing.

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But resource constraints, earmarks, and minimum spending levels in our authorizing legislation have worsened over the years phenomenon documented by the General Accounting Office a few months back and have left us, in fiscal year 1988, with a sorely unbalanced portfolio of research activities. This year we must devote 94 percent of our research budget (excluding ERIC) to regional laboratories and university-based centers; only a tiny sum is left to support individual researchers and other kinds of worthy research projects. Chart 2 illustrates this situation.

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