Ohio Education Research Center

The Ohio Education Research Center (OERC) was founded in 2012 by a group of researchers from Ohio universities and independent research organizations. The initial charge for the OERC came from the Ohio Department of Education’s Race to the Top program (RttT). This project focused on the role of the OERC to develop and implement a coherent P-20 education research agenda in collaboration with the Ohio Department of Education and Ohio Board of Regents (now the Ohio Department of Higher Education). The OERC: Provides timely and high-quality evaluation and research products for local, county, state, federal and private agencies as well as other policy informing organizations; Serves as a bridge to education practitioners, researchers and policymakers translating the needs of practitioners into the research agenda and research into actionable practice improving policy at all levels of education; and Brings together diverse resources on education throughout the state to improve access to high quality knowledge. Core funding for the OERC is provided by Ohio Analytics, a consortium of state agencies in Ohio. The Ohio Analytics includes the Ohio Department of Education, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, The Ohio Department of Higher Education, Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities and the Ohio Housing Finance Agency. The OERC also receives funding through private foundations as well as federal grants and contracts. The OERC conducts research utilizing administrative data available through the Ohio Analytics partnership. Ohio Analytics centralizes state administrative data into a single data repository, the Ohio Longitudinal Data Archive (OLDA), for education and workforce research. In addition to conducting research using the data available through the Ohio Analytics partnership, OERC research draws upon the expertise of its staff and an affiliated network of researchers to generate high-quality research products using a variety of methods and data sources, including case studies, environmental scans, literature reviews and survey research. The OERC creates products and tools that connect practitioners with research.