Mission

The Education Policy Research Center (EPRC) is an independent research center housed within the College of Education at the University of Florida that unites interdisciplinary scholars from across the university to provide research needed to inform education policy in meaningful ways. The core researchers will be drawn from the fields of education, economics, public policy, political science, and sociology, among others. At its core, EPRC’s mission is to stimulate and support scholarly research on relevant and timely education policy issues and to disseminate the findings widely to students, educators scholars, and policymakers. 

Vision

Rigorous and relevant educational policy evaluation is becoming increasingly important and demanded at the federal, state, and local levels. To meet this demand, the Education Policy Research Center (EPRC) deploys two of the greatest assets at the University of Florida—analytic talent and the combined AAU and land-grant missions—to provide education policy analysis. EPRC is inspired by its partnership-driven collaborations between scholars and policymakers from around the county with the goal of providing policy research designed to improve academic, social, and behavioral outcomes, particularly for students who are most underserved within education.

Education Policy Research Center will: 

  1. Serve as a convening authority for the various research units within the University of Florida to bring together entities focusing on the advancement of educational practices and connect research with broader policy conversations at the local, state, and national levels.
  2. Produce robust, rigorous, and data-driven scholarship around current policy debates within primary, secondary, and postsecondary arenas.
  3. Provide local, state, and national policy-makers with actionable and research-based recommendations on policies of interest.
  4. Partner with local and state education agencies as well as postsecondary institutions to identify effective programs and policies with the potential to increase student educational outcomes and organizational efficiency.