ABSTRACT
When the smoke and dust had settled, it became clear that the field of education research had been hit by a major earthquake. Roughly between 1995 and 2002, numerous reports citing scientific deficiencies in education research or suggesting that it was a field in need of rehabilitation were issued.1 Critics of education research charged that the designs on which much of the research is based are inferior, the quality of the data typically collected is shoddy, and the results of most studies are not to be believed or trusted. To make matters worse, critics charged, the poor quality of education research rendered it useless as a scientific guide to policymakers’ and practitioners’ decisions about how to improve education in the United States. Consider, for example, the argument expressed in a recent U.S. Department of Education document that the education research community has not produced a “solid research base” to guide policymakers’ decisions, resulting in those decisions often being “guided by personal experience, folk wisdom, and ideology.”2
