EdWeek’s brief profile on John Q. Easton, head of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), drives home the importance and renewed focus on relevance and usefulness in education research. Over the years, we have collected vast sums of education data about students, teachers, schools, districts, states, and countries. Advances and economies in database management, electronic storage, and telecommunications have all supported these efforts. While we have conquered the challenged of collecting voluminous data, we now need to ensure we are collecting the right data and analyzing it in a manner that allows those individuals who are working with students to apply learnings and support dramatic gains in student, teacher, and school performance.

As the article notes, and as we certainly encourage with the education organizations we work with, we need to look at student outcomes in the context of larger organizational outcomes so we can understand how learning systems are working, rather than how an individual intervention is working. The article cites the fine work of Anthony Byrk who supports a ‘design-engineering’ approach that includes, “…designing an intervention, testing it, reviewing and redesigning it, and testing it again.” Fundamental in this approach is a set of meaningful data that can inform each of these interrelated and interdependent processes.

We are certainly fans of Mr. Easton’s past work at the Consortium on Chicago School Research and look forward to his leadership and the upcoming efforts of the IES.