EVENTS

Date:	Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Time:	4:00 PM -- 5:30 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

New Head of Carnegie Foundation Outlines Bold Vision for Educational R&D

WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 19, 2008--A new research and development infrastructure sharply focused on performance improvement is needed to address the challenges of twenty-first century schooling, Anthony S. Bryk, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, said at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday, November 19. "We need a call not for more new programs, but rather fundamental institutional change in the way we approach R&D," he remarked. "The basic arrangements of public education, the work of universities, the commercial sector, and the connections among these enterprises are extraordinarily weak for carrying out this work."

Bryk, delivering his first major policy address since taking the helm of Carnegie in September, outlined a bracing vision for how to construct a research and development capability in the education sector. His plan, which he calls "Design, Educational Engineering, and Development (D-EE-D) Infrastructure for School Improvement," aims to fundamentally reshape how education research affects policy by laying the groundwork for enhanced collaboration between researchers and practitioners and promoting models of innovation that are scalable across school districts. "We must make schooling more efficient while simultaneously pressing forward toward more ambitious academic learning for all children," he said. "This involves learning by doing and developing a wisdom of practice when it comes to integrating education research on the ground." 

Bryk's D-EE-D plan:

• "Aims toward a science of performance improvement in teaching." He said that better instruction not only requires recruiting and training high-quality teachers, but also improving the tools, materials, and instructional systems with which they work and learn. 
• "Must focus on usable knowledge for improving instructional systems." He said that effectively applying research in the classroom involves placing the day-to-day work of educators at the center of inquiry, where their problems of practice become the most critical question of study. 
• "Must exploit technology as source of possible disruptive innovations." He said that technology will invariably alter the way that students and teachers interact, and researchers must learn how to harness it in ways that maximize achievement across diverse locales and student populations.
• "Must seek to accelerate processes of innovation diffusion." He said that this goal can only be accomplished through a commitment to measuring core educational activities at scale and then systematically testing, refining, and evaluating advances in teaching and learning. 

Bryk, one of the nation's preeminent education researchers and a former chaired professor at Stanford University and the University of Chicago, has gained widespread attention since his appointment this fall to lead the influential Carnegie Foundation. Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at AEI, wrote in The American that "Bryk is the rare scholar and reformer equal to the opportunities [the presidency] presents." Chester E. Finn, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, added that "Bryk is not only one of the smartest thinkers in American education, he's also one of the most creative and reform-minded, as keen for effective charter schools and choice-style reforms as for high standards and effective pedagogies."

Bryk first outlined his D-EE-D vision in a chapter that he coauthored with Louis M. Gomez of Northwestern University in The Future of Educational Entrepreneurship (Harvard Education Press, 2008), which was edited by Hess. In the chapter, Bryk called for "a serious transformation in the ways we develop and support our teachers, the tools, materials, ideas, and evidence with which they work, and the organizational and institutional contexts in which all of this occurs."

"The chapter is a wonderful contribution to the role that education research can play in helping to foster a dynamic supply side of education," Hess said. "Bryk's scholarship on the topic is indispensable, and Carnegie made an exemplary choice in elevating him to president." 

--THOMAS GIFT

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