Thank you, Amber! My colleague Amber Northern, Fordham’s longtime senior vice president for research, has done American education a great service by recommending a future for the Institute for Education Sciences that goes far beyond undoing the damage done by DOGE a year ago.
On sabbatical from Fordham for seven months and—at the invitation of Secretary McMahon—detailed to the U.S. Department of Education under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA), Amber, with help from a solitary research assistant (plus beaucoup interested parties, some invited, some self-invited), produced a 95-page report, subtitled “a strategy for relevance and renewal,” which the powers-that-be, after some dithering, finally made public on Friday at mid-day. Endorsements from those powers were cordial but guarded, as you can see in the accompanying press release, though acting IES director Matthew Soldner separately issued a thoughtful and supportive message via blog.
That’s because, as best one can tell from outside, the administration itself has made no decisions about what actually to do with IES—as it gradually seeks to “eliminate” the Education Department itself, so far by cutting staff, attempting to cut budgets, and outsourcing various programs and duties to other agencies. This silence—or indecision, political wariness, whatever—serves, of course, to make the entire education field less trusting and confident regarding future developments. (Meanwhile, Congress keeps adding funds to various IES activities—and other Department programs—that the White House keeps trying to shrink or zero out.)
How to think about reconstructing IES’s central function within that unwanted department—especially with vast uncertainty as to whether Congress will ever update the aging (2002) Education Sciences Reform Act that created IES? Many of the reforms proposed by Amber could be undertaken under current law, but several major recommendations would require legislative action “should Congress choose to reauthorize ESRA.” These include building a lot more flexibility for states into the “regional labs” program and empowering IES to do direct procurements of cutting-edge projects rather than struggling through the department’s glacial grants-and-contracts unit.
At the core of Amber’s recommendations for the future of IES are six “big shifts.” You can (should) read them for yourself, both in the executive summary and longer justifications, but here’s the gist, with some comments by me.
1: Rather than spreading resources across many disconnected projects, IES should focus on the most urgent education challenges, informed by state and district leaders.
Focusing scarce resources on urgent (and upcoming) challenges makes all kinds of sense. Who should decide what those are is more complicated. The “informed by state and district leaders” part was to be expected, considering the administration’s pledge to return education to the states. One must ask, however, whether gathering advice in that way can ever yield a coherent and worthwhile agenda for a federal agency that should instead (in my view) be leading states and districts into the future, while also helping with a finite list of current challenges that are actually amenable to research and/or data. At the same time, I’m mindful of angst in the field that entrusting such priorities to whatever administration is in power will lead (as we’ve seen at CDC, FDA, etc.) to idiosyncratic and politicized choices. The least bad governance resolution that I can see—built into the 2002 authorizing legislation—is to appoint top-notch, independent leadership for IES plus a robust, apolitical National Board for Education Sciences that includes wise folk from states and localities, as well as science, statistics, and education practice. But “independence” isn’t likely to appeal to the present administration—and perhaps beyond—in this era of the “unitary executive.”
2: Instead of funding multiple data collections and longitudinal surveys that may be redundant or outdated, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) should develop a streamlined and coordinated data strategy while preserving and strengthening its vital core functions, such as the Nation’s Report Card.
If you don’t read anything else in this report, focus on the 20 pages that address the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the beating heart of IES, the part that can trace its origin to Lincoln’s time, the place from which we get most of the data on which everything else depends—including those state and local policies so dear to the administration—and the part of NCES that DOGE did the worst damage to. (Gutting veteran statistical experts is leading, for example, to some deterioration in the quality of state data collection, which is a prerequisite for reliable national data.) It’s important to note, though, that Amber’s recommendations go so much further than rebuilding. They amount to a full overhaul of NCES’s core functions (and trimming the non-core and duplicative kind) and are especially smart about longitudinal data and NAEP—the Nation’s Report Card. If nothing else in this report gets acted upon, may it please be the overhauls spelled out here!
3: Rather than focus on individual or project-specific grants within a single state, institution, or jurisdiction, IES should prioritize multi-state awards to help scale the most promising interventions, resources, and policies.
Obvious, desirable, and commonsensical (but why hasn’t that been past practice?)
4: Direct the focus of the research work towards practicality, innovation, and relevance.
Another one that’s hard to quarrel with, though it leaves open the question of who decides. (See Big Shift #1.)
5: IES should build mechanisms by which the applied research and technical assistance work of its Regional Educational Labs (RELs) is responsive, timely, and coordinated, as well as shared across the country.
For 40 years, I’ve questioned the value of the “regional labs,” and in the present era, they’re less needed than ever. But they’re embedded in statute, they’ve got lobbyists and protectors, and apparently nobody has the stomach to go to war against them. That being the case, read the fine print of Amber’s recommendation because it would build in a lot of needed flexibility for states to make use of the labs.
6: Narrow the scope of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) to the development of practice guides and tools and ensure that its evidence base is better utilized.
The WWC was a great idea, now spread too thin and often lacking certainty about what actually does work. So tighten it and get it to concentrate on what it does best.
Finally, let me cite Amber’s wise words as to why rehabilitating and modernizing IES is worth doing and the “bedrock” principles that such an overhaul should preserve:
Executing on the big shifts in the prior section will be a heavy lift. These are not nips and tucks, as IES is struggling in multiple ways to remain relevant and responsive. But let’s also remember that it is an entity worth redemption and revitalization, precisely because its work has the potential to empower those who deliver education to the American people, meaning state and local leaders, school leaders, teachers, and the broader public, including parents.
Some of the bedrocks of IES revitalization that must carry forward include its independence, scientific integrity, statistics infrastructure, and rigorous research across diverse settings.
Well done, Dr. Northern (and welcome back to Fordham)! The country and education field owe you big thanks. Now may the “powers that be” seize this baton and carry it across the finish line. If they can do that while allowing for the “independence,” “scientific integrity,” and “rigor” that IES and the field need, it will more than make up for the damage done a year ago. It will, in fact, do American education a great deal of good.
