With political change coming soon to the nation's capital, policymakers and national groups are trying to divine what the shifts might mean for the U.S. Department of Education's long-running, and sometimes controversial, campaign to transform education into an "evidence based" field. The movement to promote more scientifically rigorous research in education predates President Bush's tenure by a year or more. Experts agree that the Bush administration and Congress gave it a mighty push, first by enacting the No Child Left Behind Act, which calls more than 100 times for basing education decisions on "scientifically based research," and then by reorganizing the Education Department's research arm into the Institute of Education Sciences, which has led the charge for toughening research standards. Now, both the No Child Left Behind law and the Education Sciences Reform Act , the 2002 law that gave birth to the IES, are up for renewal. The Oval Office will change hands next January, and the six-year term of Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, the IES' first director, ends in November.