The four IES-funded studies appear to be free of progressive or other ideological bias, though many findings receive more applause in conservative quarters than liberal ones. For example, conservatives welcomed the finding by Durkin and his colleagues that state-funded pre-school education has an adverse effect on a child’s social and educational outcomes by 6th grade. Anstreicher and colleagues report that school desegregation yielded positive effects on student learning in the South but not in other parts of the country. Angrist and colleagues found positive effects on longer-term educational outcomes of charter schools in Boston. Chen and Harris find that higher enrollments in charter schools benefit all students district-wide. Dee and Wyckoff find performance pay lifted student achievement in Washington, D.C.
Studies that did not receive IES support were slightly more likely to generate findings liberals applaud. Reardon reports that the socioeconomic divide in achievement widened dramatically during the last half of the 20th century. Jackson finds a positive effect of additional school spending on the long-term economic outcomes of students from low-income families, a result widely used by teacher organizations and liberal advocacy groups in state school finance cases. Woessmann and Hanushek tell us that student achievement in adolescence is correlated with a country’s rate of economic growth. Chetty and colleagues show that a child who has an effective rather than an ineffective teacher in elementary school will enjoy more years of education and higher pay when they become an adult. Dee and Jacob find gains in math, but not in reading, from the accountability system established by the federal law, No Child Left Behind. Hartney reports that teacher unions have long been heavily subsidized by federal, state, and local governments.
Considered altogether, the findings from the non-IES studies are diverse but somewhat more likely to fit well with the agenda of left-leaning advocacy groups than those funded by IES. Even so, the number of cases is too small to draw definite conclusions. What is clear is that there is no evidence that IES selects out progressive studies for funding.
I draw three conclusions. First, IES has a history of supporting high-quality research projects that have had a substantial impact on what we know about our schools. Second, education research will survive even if IES resources are substantially reduced, as private and other governmental programs provide adequate sources of financial support.
Third, and most important, IES should continue the bulk of its data collection and longitudinal surveys, such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Nearly every one of the eleven major studies draw upon IES surveys or its other data collection activities. IES data remain an essential source of basic information about the operation of K–12 and pre-school programs.
Collecting information on the state of American education was the first task given to the Office of Education when it was established in 1867. It remains IES’s most important job. Just as the Commerce Department gathers information on the state of the U.S. economy and the Bureau of the Census tracks demographic trends, so IES tells us what is happening in schools. Americans need to know that public school enrollments are falling, that chronic absenteeism is now rampant in public schools, that the per pupil cost of education is on the rise, and that learning tanked when schools closed during the pandemic. None of this evidence would be as irrefutable had we not a national data-collection system.
Unfortunately, some of DOGE’s proposed cuts are aimed at IES’s data collection function. That mistake needs to be corrected by Linda McMahon, the 13th Secretary of Education. Above all, she must protect the Department of Education’s information-gathering capacity.
