Getting the word out on its research and reports will be a top priority for the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University.

As the center begins to generate policy-related research, it will look to cast the information in forms that policymakers and education officials can easily access.

Among the things the center is going to publish is a series of as many as six policy briefs a year that will summarize what is known about particular issues and mail them to officials. In addition, the center expects to produce two policy reports a year that will be more in-depth treatments of specific policy issues of concern to Michigan officials.

Working closely with Barbara Markle, director of the Office of k–12 Outreach, the center will also look to tap the regularly-scheduled President’s Education Forum as a venue for researchers working with the center to discuss their findings with state legislators and education leaders.

Other policy-related outreach that center staff will support includes publication and dissemination of occasional working papers based on faculty research at MSU, an annual conference on an issue of concern to legislators and education leaders, and bi-monthly seminars for a small group of core participants in Michigan policy debates.

In addition to providing officials with information, the center will also seek to respond to requests for information from legislators and others, said Professor David Plank, the center’s director.

In fact, the work on getting feedback from various policy constituencies has already begun. Plank and Markle have met with a large number of officials involved with education policy in the state. Those include legislators, members of Governor John Engler’s staff, and officials from the state Department of Education and professional associations.

Plank said the goal was to find out what issues were at the top of their agendas, and how the policy center could help them examine issues. The response was clear: Accountability is on everybody’s agenda.

It didn’t take Plank long to decide that educational accountability would be the first research focus of the center.

“It so happens that it is an issue that Michigan State can bring some expertise to bear on,” he said. “It’s an area where we can make a positive and valuable contribution to the debate, and so it strikes me as a very good place for us to start.”

The center also expects to develop a Web site that will not only contain the various briefs and reports it produces, but also links to other sources of good information. Plank hopes the multipronged approach to dissemination will make it possible for MSU to play a constructive role in the often contentious debates about educational policy.

“There will be a lot of different kinds of products that we will be producing that will translate what we know in the university about education policy issues into terms that make it valuable and useful for people who make decisions about education policy in this state,” Plank said.