Giving Compass' Take:

· Frederick Hess at Education Next talks with Darleen Opfer, director of RAND Education and Labor, about her job at RAND and the current state of education research. 

· How is RAND making a difference in education? What is to come in the future of education? 

· Here's more about RAND and how they are changing education. 

Darleen Opfer serves as director of RAND Education and Labor, a division of the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. She leads a 200-person staff that conducts research for major government agencies and private foundations. Along with her extensive work in the U.S., Darleen has researched teacher professional development in countries such as England and Turkey, and served as an education advisor in Norway, Israel, India and South Africa. Before RAND, she was director of research and a senior lecturer at the University of Cambridge. 

Rick Hess: Darleen, readers probably have a vague notion that RAND Education does research and analysis, but can you explain more concretely what it is you do?

Darleen Opfer: RAND was founded 70 years ago to provide objective analysis on defense issues for the U.S. government. In the late 1960s, we expanded our work to social and economic policy areas such as education and health. For several decades, RAND Education has conducted research on schools and other educational institutions from pre-K through postsecondary, but recently we combined the education and labor research groups.

We’re excited about this new structure because it allows us to connect our education research with our significant body of research on workforce skills needed for individuals to be successful. I think what people would find surprising about RAND is the breadth of research that is conducted. Our education and labor research is quite tame compared to work my colleagues are doing to track guns on the dark web, fight the opioid crisis, and clean up space junk.

Read the full article about education research by Frederick Hess at Education Next.