Keynote speaker Hugh Price fields a question from the audience.
The panel addressing the needs of policy-makers considers a question from the audience.		Jack Jennings, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, and Lisa Towne discuss the state of evidence-based education.

Research and scientific evidence should play a central role in guiding change in education policy, programs and practice. However, scientific research in education has long been the subject of intense debate. As the country enters a new era of education reform with the No Child Left Behind Act and the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002, the issues surrounding scientific evidence in education have become all the more significant.

To bring greater attention to these issues, the National Education Knowledge Industry Association, the Progressive Policy Institute, and the National Academy of Sciences co-hosted an all-day policy forum on research in education on March 11, 2004. Building on the success of a March 2002 event hosted by NEKIA, PPI, and the Education Quality Institute, this forum provided an opportunity for educators and policy leaders to review how research-based knowledge can be translated into classroom practice. It examined the concept of evidence-based education, assessed efforts over the past two years to transform education into an evidence-based field, and looked at future challenges.