“Influence: A Study of the Factors Influencing Education Policy

The Editorial Projects in Education Research Center…has conducted a study of the factors that have influenced the educational policy landscape during the past decade. Using a two-stage survey methodology, we asked leading education-policy experts first to identify and then to rate highly influential agents or “Influentials” across four different categories – Studies, Organizations, People, and Information Sources.

We report influence scores and rankings for the leading nominees in each category. As the study’s results demonstrate, there are strong interconnections among these four dimensions of influence. Certain institutions, for example, appear in multiple categories, represented as prominent organizations, the homes of renowned experts, and sponsors of leading studies and information sources.

This report offers a first attempt at untangling the complex web of influence that has helped to shape education policy over the years. The full report describes the study’s methodology in greater detail and provides in-depth profiles for the top-ranked nominees in each of the four influence categories. An appendix to the report also includes a complete listing of all studies, organizations, people, and information sources that received nominations in our survey of education-policy experts.


Influential Studies

… The studies ranking in the highest tier of influence – the “short list” – prove to be quite different from one another in a variety of ways. Some nominees conform to a conventional understanding of a study, as a relatively discrete work taking the form of a clearly identifiable core product like a report, monograph, or commission proceedings. The National Reading Panel’s 2000 report Teaching Children to Read very much fits this mold, as do: the two National Research Council reports that made the list (How People Learn and Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children); What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future, a report by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF); and the American Diploma Project’s Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma that Counts.

But when asked to identify influential studies, respondents often cited broader bodies or collections of work rather than individual reports and publications. Several researchers, for example, were nominated for strands of investigation on particular topics: Richard Elmore on school reform; Jay Greene on graduation rates; Paul Peterson on school choice and vouchers; and William Sanders on value-added methodology.

The Education Trust, as an organization, was recognized in a similar manner for a series of reports highlighting the issue of teacher quality. The Tennessee Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio experiment (Project STAR) offers another twist within the set of nominees that could be labeled research strands. Project STAR is represented by a variety of studies conducted by a number of independent researchers and institutions, all focusing on the state’s class-size experiment. Perhaps furthest removed from the traditional conception of a discrete study were the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Far from being a single piece of work, NAEP is a decades-long student assessment and data collection initiative of the U.S. Department of Education. Likewise, the international TIMSS study has at its core a large-scale assessment combined with the collection of background and contextual data, as well as major research components examining curricular content and instructional practices… “

To read the full report:
http://www.edweek.org/media/influence_study.pdf

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