I find it useful to think of IES’s traditional activities as falling into three broad buckets: statistical collections, evaluations of tailored (and, thus, replicable) interventions, and, well, everything else. The “everything else” constituted the lion’s share of IES activity.
Given that, here are five thoughts on how best to reimagine IES’s role.
First, IES should prioritize collecting timely, reliable data on the warp and woof of American education, which is also the mission most closely aligned with the Constitution’s Article I Weights and Measures Clause. That means bolstering the National Assessment of Educational Progress, School and Staffing Survey, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, and the like. Right now, post-DOGE, these data collections are being held together by duct tape and skeleton crews. That’s a travesty. This is the work that only an appropriately funded and staffed IES can credibly do, and it provides the foundation for informed public debate and policymaking.
Second, IES should seize the excuse to leave all its other legacy initiatives on the cutting-room floor. Will that put lots of education evaluation shops and professors out of luck? Probably. So be it. Academe intent on dabbling in the familiar ed-school fascinations can still hit up philanthropy, find clients, or seek institutional support. The majority of federal education research funding is likely to be gobbled up by the tiny share of researchers who do this work responsibly. That’s fine. We often hear talk about needing a Flexner report to transform education research and training. Well, Flexner was largely about culling the quacks and crackpots to reshape the medical ecosystem. Here’s the chance to do that for education.
Third, refocusing IES can’t just be an excuse to put lipstick on the pig. There’ve been suggestions, for instance, that IES may be able to set things right if it simply adopts new research “priorities.” While there’s nothing overtly wrong with this, it risks becoming an escape hatch to avoid larger changes to the agency’s mission and direction. There’s nothing easier than for researchers to pay lip service to new priorities by tweaking any proposal to suit them. The upshot is that clearer, more academic priorities may help, but only as part of a larger shift.
