New Generation of Education Research Centers Is Chosen

Vanderbilt University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have won contracts from the U.S. Department of Education to head the first of a new generation of national education research centers.

The centers, focusing separately on school choice, improving the academic performance of low-achieving students, and rural education, are the first of eight new federal research centers to come out of the department's new Institute of Education Sciences.

With grants of $10 million each over five years, the centers are markedly smaller than the generation of federal education research centers that preceded them. But they also break ground by covering new territory, enlisting non-university-based research partners, and offering...