Critical issues: Crafting state educational policy: The slippery role of research and researchers

For most of the past decade, there have been rumblings in the NRC membershi p around the question: Should NRC be involved in attempting to influence ed ucational policy making? This question has been posed at Town Meetings, in campaign statements, committee reports, conference forums, symposia, and pa pers. II has been debated at board meetings, Vital Issues, and in NRC publi cations. The debate continues, but that debate often seems grounded in one or more unwarranted assumptions. In this article, some of those assumptions are challenged, primarily through the use of descriptive case studies of e ducational policy making in two states - Texas and California.