National Academies Convenes Activities Exploring the Future of Education Research and Statistics

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has launched several activities in partnership with the Department of Education to identify areas for growth in the fields of education research and education statistics in the federal government, especially programs within the Department’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES). On May 10, the National Academies panel on A Vision and Roadmap for Education Statistics in 2030 and Beyond held its first public meeting to develop a plan for modernizing education statistics at IES’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) by the year 2030. The panel will produce a report that prioritizes areas and activities for NCES to pursue for the remainder of the decade and outlines a vision for what the agency should should aspire to be and how it should operate.

Another NASEM panel, Opportunities for the National Assessment of Educational Progress in an Age of AI and Pervasive Computation: A Pragmatic Vision for 2030 and Beyond, will be hold its first meetings on May 13-14 to discuss the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a Congressionally-mandated assessment administered by NCES for grade-school children in core subjects. The panel will aim to identify innovations for the assessment, especially to incorporate digital technology and reduce the costs of administering the assessment over the next ten years. The panel will produce a short, accessible report that makes recommendations for potential changes to NAEP.

A third NASEM panel on The Future of Education Research at the Institute of Education Sciences in the U.S. Department of Education, will convene to provide recommendations to IES on potential improvements to be made for research within IES’s National Center for Education Research (NCER) and National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER). Topics the panel will address include potential gaps in research areas, best practices for organizing application requests for research, new research methods that should be encouraged, and new investments for research training that may benefit the institute. Although the panel’s meetings dates have yet to be publicly announced, the committee will publish a report making conclusions and recommendations for IES.