Institute of Education Sciences

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is the research department of the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE). It represents the federal government's effort to improve the quality and respectability of educational research, and thus contributes to efforts to reform American education. Preceded by other USDOE research structures, IES now carries out its mission through four centers. The effort has been met with mixed reviews.

President George W. Bush signed into law the Education Sciences Reform (ESR) Act on November 5, 2002, one year after the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. ESR initiated a new organization, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), to replace the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI). OERI was very closely intertwined with the Department of Education and funded all methods of research. IES is a separate entity whose mission is to report on the condition of education, the practices that improve achievement, and the effectiveness of education programs. Its goal is to transform education into an evidence-based field that provides resources for educational decisions.

Evidenced-based education (EBE) refers to a defined hierarchy of preferred research evidence that includes randomized trial as the first preference. Developing and implementing research designs using randomized trials has not been popular within education because of the difficulty of controlling for errors inherent in schools. The rationale for the IES to encourage the use of randomized trials in education is that it will identify programs that can improve student [Page 469]outcomes. EBE and SBR (scientifically based research) are terms that are also included in the NCLB. IES states strong preferences for SBR in regard to funding research opportunities.

Many educational researchers find the IES preference for SBR/EBE offensive. The thought is that the educational research question should determine the research methodology, not the funding agency. In addition, educational researchers state that the SBR preference negates the value of action or qualitative research efforts.

President George W. Bush named Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst to a 6-year term as the director of the IES; Whitehurst had been the assistant secretary of OERI since July 2001, and had participated in the OERI reauthorization design. Whitehurst is a strong proponent of EBE and SBR.

IES was designed to be more streamlined, more focused on its central research mission, and more resistant to political interference than OERI. The OERI mission had been compromised by both the congressional and executive branches of government. For example, there were congressional mandates that specified that OERI must spend its research and development funds on regional labs and centers that had not been deemed effective. In addition, the executive branch had used its power to overrule OERI policies with respect to reporting test results if the results were not favorable.

IES includes a director, the National Board of Education (NEB), and four national research centers: (1) National Center for Education Research (NCER), (2) National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), (3) National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and (4) National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER).

The four national research centers have specialized missions within educational research. The NEB oversees the centers and maintains consistency and focus for each center. The National Education Board (NEB) consists of 15 voting members appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate. The director and the commissioners of each of the national research centers are nonvoting ex-officio members of the NEB. Additional ex-officio members include 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.

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