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| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Parent department | Department of Education |
| Website | ies.ed.gov |
TheInstitute of Education Sciences (IES) is the independent, non-partisan statistics, research, and evaluation arm of theU.S. Department of Education. IES' stated mission is to provide scientific evidence on which to ground education practice and policy and to share this information in formats that are useful and accessible to educators, parents, policymakers, researchers, and the public.[1] It was created as part of theEducation Sciences Reform Act of 2002.
The first director of IES wasGrover Whitehurst, who was appointed in November 2002 and served for six years. As of March 2024, Matthew Soldner is the acting Director of IES.[2]
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IES is divided into four major research and statistics centers:
The National Board for Education Sciences serves as an advisory board for IES and has 15 voting members, who are appointed by thePresident of the United States. The Board also includes several ex-officio, non-voting members, including the director of IES, the commissioners of the four centers, and representatives of theNational Institute of Child Health and Human Development, theU.S. Census Bureau, theU.S. Department of Labor, and theNational Science Foundation. The Board advises and consults with the director and the commissioners to identify research and organizational priorities for IES. On October 7, 2022, President Biden announced the intention to appointment 15 new members to the NBES.[6] Larry Hedges, of Northwestern University, was previously the chairman of the National Board for Education Sciences.[7]
In the winter of 2020–2021, after the election of PresidentJoe Biden but prior to his inauguration in January, theTrump administration carried out several eleventh-hour appointments, including filling the NBES board where vacancies had existed for several years. Many of these appointment choices were harshly criticized by education organizations for a lack of academic or educational research credentials.[8][9][10][11]
In May 2021, two of the new NBES appointees,Steve Hanke andJohn Yoo, both professors, published a commentary inThe Wall Street Journal, arguing that their Board commission documents and those of others had been duly signed and certified during the Trump administration and sent to the office of theSecretary of Education. Yet, the new Secretary,Miguel Cardona, refused to acknowledge the appointments, deliver the credentials, or facilitate statutorily required Board meetings.[12] In theirWall Street Journal commentary, the professors asserted that the circumstances mirrored those of the landmark 1803 U.S. Supreme Court case ofMarbury v. Madison.
In July 2021, thePacific Legal Foundation claimed that they had obtained emails fromWhite House officials confirming that Department of Education officials were in possession of the credentials and that the foundation had sent a demand letter on behalf of Hanke and Yoo.[13]
In August, Pacific Legal Foundation filed suit on behalf of Hanke and Yoo in the U.S. District Court for The District of Columbia against Secretary Cardona and the Department of Education. The suit acknowledged that NBES Board members can be removed by the administration, but argued that it must do so transparently and cannot withhold credentials or obstruct the Board's statutorily required duties.[14]
On September 3, 2021, theBiden administration acknowledged the validity of the appointments and formally terminated them, leading to a withdrawal of the suit.[15][16]
On February 10, 2025, theDepartment of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a unit within theTrump administration run byElon Musk, announced plans to cancel most of IES' contracts, amounting to $881 million in cuts across 169 contracts.[17][18] Dozens of researchers and contractors received notices directing them to immediately stop work on research projects and program evaluations financed by IES, including contracts involving student resources that were in-progress.[19] The institute is "all but shut down."[17]
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