The PIER membership included prominent education researchers, representatives of associations and the business community, and policy makers. It appears that the bill now under consideration and the PIER recommendations share a number of basic premises, but that there are also some important differences. Areas of agreement include belief in the appropriateness of a strong federal role in the area of education research, understanding that the quality of education research must be improved, and insistence that research priorities and processes be independent of partisan politics.
Dissemination is regarded as a central shortcoming of the federal education research program.
The PIER recommendation makes coordination and dissemination the chief responsibilities of the head of the agency, leaving others the responsibility for conduct of quality research and statistics. The panel notes that one of the strengths of the Department of Education is its many and varied links with the education practitioner community, something which agencies such as the National Research Council, National Science Foundation, and National Institutes of Health can not offer. PIER members considered and rejected the idea of moving OERI outside the Department of Education. Appropriation levels for education research have strangled the agency and made any efforts at internal improvement problematic. As noted in studies by the National Research Council, the President's Advisory Panel on Science and Technology, and testimony by previous assistant secretaries of both parties, the poverty of resources has shaped the research agenda and is responsible for many of the most stringent criticisms of its work.