Control of Regional Education Labs Shifting

Group that lost contract to a for-profit company files formal complaint.

Four of the Department of Education’s 10 regional educational laboratories will be run by different contractors, and all of them will have a revised mission, under a round of newly awarded five-year contracts worth more than $326 million.

Scattered around the country, the labs were created in the 1960s to help local educators bridge the gap between research and practice. Though President Bush and other policymakers have often called for their elimination, the labs have staunch supporters in Congress and have remained largely intact through successive federal administrations.

This time around, though, control of the labs changed hands in four regions, and the turnover included two labs that had been in business since 1966. They are the Southwest Education Development Laboratory, or SEDL, based in Austin, Texas, and the Appalachian Educational Laboratory, which has been run by a Charleston, W. Va.-based...