[10/30/14 update: Erosion of Federal Statistical Agencies Puts Sound Policy at Risk, Robert M. Groves and Kenneth Prewitt, Roll Call, 10/30/14.]
In a short September 17 markup, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee approved H.R. 4366, the Strengthening Education through Research Act (SETRA), after minor modifications. As explained in the June 3 blog entry, House Passes Bill Diminishing Stature and Autonomy of National Center for Education Statistics; Senate Plans Unclear, the House-passed bill re-authorizing the Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences (IES) diminishes the stature and autonomy of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) by removing presidential appointment of its commissioner and relegating other responsibilities from the commissioner to the IES director.
Because the specific concerns about these provisions are laid out in the afore-mentioned blog entry, a previous blog entry, and these letters: 11/2/09, 7/9/14, I won't go into further detail on the nature of the ASA concerns (and those of other organizations, e.g., AERA.)
One change made by Senate HELP was removing a House provision adding reporting requirements for the NCES commissioner to the IES director. The House and Senate are expected to both pass the bill before the end of this Congress. When that happens, only the heads of BJS, BLS, Census and EIA will be presidentially appointed and only the heads of BLS, Census, and EIA will be Senate confirmed. (See this blog entry, Leadership of the Federal Statistical Agencies.)
The ASA teamed with the American Educational Research Association and other organization to urge the Senate to reject the concerning NCES provisions of the House bill. In addition to sending the letters noted above, the AERA-ASA team made numerous contacts to HELP committee staff and to the offices of the Senators on HELP. Even though staff seemed receptive to our message, in the end there was great reluctance to make any changes to the bill, mainly because H.R. 4366 passed the House with bipartisan support and because of the few remaining legislative days remaining in this Congress.
The general rationale for these NCES provisions seemed to be a desire to make NCES's relationship with IES parallel with the three IES research centers, which I think shows a lack of appreciation for the difference between a federal statistical agency and a research organization by the Department of Education, who signed off on the bill, and Congressional staff. It also seems that the original placement of NCES in IES a dozen years ago made NCES vulnerable to further diminishing of its stature and autonomy. In 2011 when the Senate was proposing that it no longer approve the presidential appointment of the NCES commissioner, the reason given by staff for this proposal was that it didn't make sense to have the presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed (PASC) NCES commissioner reporting to the PASC IES director who, in turn, reported to the PASC Secretary of Education.
See also:
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