Educational Policy Research: Progress, Puzzles, and Challenges

This article addresses three topics. The first concerns the reasons that American education, which served the United States so well for the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, is not adequate today, and is especially not successful in providing disadvantaged children with the skills they need to escape poverty. The second concerns lessons from policy analyses about the efficacy of alternative approaches to improving American education, especially the education of its most disadvantaged children. I will make the case that research provides encouraging evidence on several policy approaches. At the same time, the research reveals puzzles that I believe we need to take seriously in thinking about future research to inform the design of the next round of policies. Finally, I suggest some directions for policy research that come from taking seriously puzzles in the evidence.