Charter schools are highly debated in policy and political discussions about delivering public education. As "laboratories of innovation" that often use lotteries to assign spots, they hold the potential to generate rigorous evidence about effective educational practices. This paper synthesizes and summarizes findings from charter…

The past three decades have seen charter schools emerge as a prominent and controversial alternative to traditional public schools. This policy brief examines "Thirty Years of Charter Schools: What Does Lottery-Based Research Tell Us?" which summarizes 40 studies that have used lottery research designs to analyze how charter schools…

This paper compares an uncorrected with a corrected correlation between a selection test and a test-criterion in terms of expected mean square error (EMSE). It presents evidence that although the uncorrected may be more biased than the corrected correlation, it may have a smaller EMSE value, especially in small samples. (Author/PN)

Discusses research which focused on two topics: research conducted for the evaluation of major governmental social programs, and competitive public contracting as the instrumentality for bringing about mobilization of specific resources for that purpose; the need to evaluate public programs has been a major source of expanding demand for social…

A variety of methods currently in use for selecting candidates for admission to community college allied health programs are described, and research is reviewed showing that typical indices of academic performance are unrelated to job performance. Needed research and possible selection approaches are suggested. (LH)

This hearing is the first of two to consider whether the priority setting, the guidelines, and the competitive process for the funding of 12 proposed research and development centers (which constitute nearly 80% of the budget of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) for center-based research) will be adequate to establish a…

A National Institute of Education (NIE) policy statement is presented regarding competition for future funding of regional educational laboratories and research and development (R&D) centers with appropriations available for Section 405(f) of the General Education Provisions Act (GEPA). Attention is also directed to continuing eligibility of…