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Institute of Education Sciences

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Overview:

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is the primary research arm of the Department of Education, and comprises four “National Centers” devoted to supporting and disseminating scientific research related to education, which basically means the use of randomized trials in evaluating educational methods. Randomized trials always involve the comparison of results between an experimental group, which is taught using the new method under study, and a control group, which is taught using traditional methods. The idea behind the IES is to boost this sort of research while reducing political influence on that research. The four national centers fund, evaluate, and disseminate such research, while the National Board for Education Sciences (NBES) advises the IES Director on the agency’s policies, priorities, and procedures. IES works with the Office of Innovation and Improvement and the What Works Clearinghouse, which is designed as a resource for educational decision-makers in selecting programs and practices based on scientific research.  IES also evaluates programs and grants for the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB).

 
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History:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The IES was established by the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (PDF), which eliminated the Office of Educational Research and Improvement and replaced it with the IES. IES has had the same director since its inception.

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What it Does:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The IES is run by a Director, whom the President nominates and the Senate confirms for a six-year term. IES comprises the following major administrative components. 
 
The National Center for Education Research (NCER) supports education research through grants, cooperative agreements and contracts. As of January 2008, NCER was supporting more than 275 grants. NCER research programs address education programs, practices, and policies in the following areas: reading and writing, math and science education, teacher quality, education leadership, education policy and finance, cognition and student learning, high school reform, and postsecondary education. The NCER is administered by a commissioner, who is appointed by the director of IES. The current commissioner is Mark Schneider, who has served since 2005.
 
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education. The agency’s mission is to collect, collate, analyze, and report complete statistics on the condition of American education; conduct and publish reports; and review and report on education activities internationally. The NCES conducts numerous broad surveys of education, issues annual reports, publishes a yearly Digest of Education Statistics, and provides an integrated collection of the indicators and analyses published in The Condition of Education between 2000 and 2008. The NCES is administered by a commissioner, who is appointed by the director of IES. The current commissioner is Lynn Okagaki, who has served since 2005.
 
The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) conducts large-scale evaluations of education programs and practices supported by federal funds; provides research-based technical assistance to educators and policymakers; and supports the synthesis and wide spread dissemination of the results of research and evaluation throughout the United States. Its programs include the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), an Internet-based digital library of education research and information that has been around since 1966; the Regional Educational Laboratory Program; and the National Library of Education. NCEE is run by a commissioner, who is appointed by the director of IES. The current commissioner is Phoebe H. Cottingham, who has served since 2003.
 
The National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) sponsors research regarding special education designed to expand the knowledge and understanding of infants, toddlers and children with disabilities. NCSER was established in 2004 by that year’s reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (PDF).  That statute transferred responsibility for research in special education within the Department of Education from the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to the Institute of Education Sciences. NCSER is run by a commissioner, who is appointed by the director of IES. The current acting commissioner is Lynn Okagaki, who is also commissioner of the NCES. 
 
The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) promotes informed educational decision making by providing easy access to databases and user-friendly reports that review the effectiveness of replicable educational interventions (programs, products, practices, and policies) intended to improve student outcomes. WWC selects topics on which to complete and disseminate its reviews. Dr. Mark Dynarski is the project director of the What Works Clearinghouse. He is senior fellow, associate director of research, and director of the education area at Mathematica Policy Research Inc., which has a contract with IES to run WWC. 
 
The National Board for Education Sciences (NBES) consists of up to15 voting members nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.  The principal duties of the NBES include approving the research priorities of the IES, advising the Director of IES generally, reviewing the work of IES to ensure quality, approving procedures for technical and scientific peer review of the activities of the IES, and serving as a conduit between the IES and the field of education research. The chair of the NBES is Robert C. Granger, and the following serve as nonvoting ex officio members: The Director of IES, the four Commissioners of the National Education Centers, the Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Director of the Census, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, and the Director of the National Science Foundation. The NBES appointed Norma Garza as its Executive Director in 2007.

 

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Where Does the Money Go:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Major stakeholders include the many colleges and universities that have won grants (PDF) from IES, the private organizations, both for profit and nonprofit, that have obtained IES grants, the millions of students and their parents who are affected by the policy implications and changes inferred from IES research projects, teachers, educational policymakers and administrators, and taxpayers generally.

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Controversies:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Randomized Trials in Education
The emphasis on randomized trials in evaluating educational methods has been criticized as unethical, because students in the experimental group may be subjected to methods that are not only ineffective but harmful, while students in the control group may be denied the benefits of new and useful methods. Others have argued that educational outcomes depend on more factors than can be controlled by a randomized trial, leading to doubts about whether the results are truly “scientific.” Finally, some have criticized the emphasis on randomized trials in the absence of additional funding for the schools that agree to implement them. 
Searching for Science to Guide Good Teaching (by Maria Glod, Washington Post)
What can educators learn from the Red Sox? (by Judith Singer and Beth Gamse, Usable Knowledge, Harvard University) 
 
Conflicts of Interest
In light of the political pressures and large amounts of money involved in education, it is perhaps not surprising that charges of conflict of interest relating to what research is funded and what programs or methods are recommended have arisen. 
Buyers and Sellers of Education Research (by J.E. Stone, Chronicle of Higher Education) (PDF)
Study: Bush Administration's Reading Program Hasn't Helped (by Nancy Zuckerbrod, Associated Press)
Federal Report Finds Little Gain From School Vouchers (by Maria Glod and Bill Turque, Washington Post)
 
Privacy
Some critics have charged that IES programs sometimes overstep the bounds of the privacy rights of Americans by requiring submission of personal data of students. 
Plan to Gather Student Data Is Opposed (by Michael Janofsky, New York Times)

U.S. Officials Pull Questions From Surveys About Children

(by Diana Jean Schemo, New York Times)

 

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Founded: 2002
Annual Budget: $562 million (2008)
Employees: 185 (2007)
Official Website: http://ies.ed.gov/
Institute of Education Sciences
Easton, John
Director

John Q. Easton has Education Secretary Arne Duncan to thank for his new job in Washington as head of the Institute of Education Sciences. A longtime specialist in education research from Chicago, Easton has known Duncan for nearly 20 years as a result of his work both in and for the Windy City’s public schools system.

 
A resident of Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood since 1973, Easton, 59, attended college at Hobart College in Geneva, NY, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in psychology in 1971. He went on to graduate school at Western Washington University, earning his master’s in psychology in 1973, and his PhD in measurement, evaluation, and statistical analysis from the University of Chicago in 1981.
 
While finishing his dissertation, Easton worked as a consultant for the Department of Research and Evaluation in the Chicago public schools system. In 1981, he became the director of research at the Center for Teaching and Learning at City College of Chicago, and he left in 1984 to return to the public schools as a research specialist in the Department of Equal Educational Opportunity.
 
Five years later, Easton joined the Chicago Panel on School Policy as the director of monitoring and research, helping to evaluate programs for the public schools. While still in this position he helped found, in 1990, the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR), an organization dedicated to analyzing the policies that govern Chicago Public Schools. CCSR is part of a larger initiative at the University of Chicago that’s part of the Urban Education Institute to improve urban education through research, creating charter schools, training teachers and improving curriculum.
 
It was during the early 1990s that Easton first met Duncan, who was then involved in creating a Southside Chicago community school and sought Easton’s expertise on school data.
 
In 1994, Easton left the Chicago Panel on School Policy to again rejoin the public schools system, this time as director of the Department of Research, Evaluation and Assessment.
 
He then went to work for CCSR in 1997 as deputy director, and in 2002, he was elevated to executive director, where he remained until his appointment by President Obama to lead the Institute of Education Sciences. From 2001 to 2002, he also served for the second time as director of the Department of Research, Analysis, and Assessment for the Chicago public school system. In addition, he served on the National Assessment Governing Board (2003-2007), an independent board that sets policies for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the “Nation’s Report Card.”
 
Easton’s research at CCSR has focused on trends in achievement test scores and the use of test scores in school accountability efforts and improvement. He also co-authored a recent study on the relationship between the academic performance of freshmen and high school graduation.
 
While in charge of CCSR, Easton forged a productive relationship with Duncan, the one-time head of the Chicago public schools system. Duncan once said of specialists like Easton at CCSR: “They are not ivory tower researchers. These are people who roll up their sleeves and get out to the schools and conduct research that is applicable to real situations.”
 
Easton has served on several boards and committees, including: the American Educational Research Association’s Relating Research to Practice Award Committee (2007- current); vice chair of the Committee on Standards, Design and Methodology for the National Assessment Governing Board; the National Council on Educational Measurement’s Brenda Loyd Dissertation Award Committee (2005 – 2008); and as an advisory board member for the Center for Child Welfare and Education at Northern Illinois University (2001 - current).
 
Easton is the co-author of Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago, a book that studies Chicago’s 20-year-old experiment in public school decentralization, evaluating one hundred elementary schools that improved and one hundred that did not.
 
John Easton Biography (Department of Education)
John Easton Biography (Consortium on Chicago School Research)
John Easton Biography (The National Academies)
John Q. Easton (Who Runs Gov, Washington Post)
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Whitehurst, Grover
Previous Director
Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst became the first Director of IES in November 2002 and served until November 2008. Born and raised in Washington, North Carolina, he earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology at East Carolina University, and master’s and Ph.D. degrees in child psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Whitehurst joined the faculty at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1970 and eventually rose to the position of Chairman of the Department of Psychology. He also taught at the University of New South Wales in Australia and was Academic Vice President of the Merrill-Palmer Institute in Detroit.  In government, he served as assistant secretary for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, the predecessor to the IES, where he established the What Works Clearinghouse. 
After leaving the IES, Whitehurst became the director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.
 
“The view of education that may be ruled out is that education is an art and it will never be more than accumulated craft wisdom. These are very pessimistic views of education.”
-Russ Whitehurst, 2003
 
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