|
|
|
|
Vanderbilt University to be home of first federally funded national research center on school choice
9/13/2004
10:26 am
 Kenneth Wong NASHVILLE, Tenn. ñ Vanderbilt University will be the home of the first federally funded national center to take a wide-ranging look at school choice ñ from its impact on student achievement and instructional quality to whether it meets the needs of special education and disabled students and its effects across racial and class lines. The university's Peabody College of education and human development has won a $10 million U.S. Department of Education grant to fund the Center on School Choice, Competition and Achievement. The grant ñ a cooperative agreement between the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences and Vanderbilt ñ will pay out approximately $2 million per year for five years. "This grant is an important and exciting development for Vanderbilt and helps demonstrate why Peabody College is widely regarded as one of the top education schools in the country," Vanderbilt Chancellor Gordon Gee said. "We competed against a number of top institutions, and the fact that we prevailed in securing funding to help tackle one of our nation's most challenging issues says volumes about our exceptional faculty." Partners in the new center include some of the world's top universities and research organizations: The Brookings Institution, Harvard University's Program on Education Policy and Governance, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) and the Stanford University School of Education. "The current state of research provides hardly definitive answers to a lot of questions about school choice ñ will it raise student achievement? Satisfy parents and students? Improve instructional and curricular quality? Segregate students along racial or class lines? Be limited by political and legal constraints? These are just some of the questions we want to answer," said Vanderbilt professor Kenneth Wong, who will serve as director of the new center. Wong is a professor of public policy and education and associate director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy. A multidisciplinary team from the partnered institutions including economists, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, curriculum experts, psychometricians, statisticians, public finance analysts and legal scholars will attempt to answer these questions surrounding school choice. A big part of their work will also be collecting data that can be shared and analyzed by researchers from different disciplines and institutions. "I am excited about the opportunity for Vanderbilt and Peabody to make a major contribution to the body of research on school choice," said Camilla Benbow, Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development at Peabody College. "With several choice options emerging in school districts around the country, it is important that everyone ñ parents, researchers, teachers, principals and legislators ñ learn as much as we can about the effects of school choice on student achievement." The center's first major project will include randomized field trials on the effects of charter schools on student achievement, teacher recruitment and teaching quality, reading instruction and parental involvement. A second project will focus on the effects of competition on public schools and systems using the nation's largest student achievement growth database, which is housed at NWEA, as well as accountability data gathered from several states and school districts. The first round of research is expected to start before the end of the year. Other studies will take a look at issues such as how recent immigrants balance their children's schooling needs with their own ethnic identities and how other nations have designed and implemented choice-based programs. In addition to research, the center plans to offer a leadership institute for heads of non-traditional public and private schools as well as a leadership development program for district school principals and assistant principals on how to compete in a changing education marketplace that includes school choice. For more news about Vanderbilt, visit the News Service homepage at www.vanderbilt.edu/News. Media contact: Princine Lewis, (615) 322-NEWS |
|
| Vanderbilt University | 2201 West End Avenue Nashville, TN 37235 | Phone: (615) 322-7311 | Vanderbilt Home | Public Affairs | Sitemason |
