Congress Adjourns Without Passing Bill Weakening National Center for Education Statistics

By Steve Pierson posted 12-17-2014 09:01

  

After the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) Committee passed a bill in September that would have weakened the stature and autonomy of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), it seemed certain the House and Senate would pass the bill in the lame duck Congress. The House had passed the bill—H.R. 4366, the Strengthening Education through Research Act (SETRA)—this spring with broad bipartisan support and committee staff from both chambers were actively negotiating any changes the Senate HELP would make leading up to its September mark up. It appears however that a few Senators blocked its Senate passage with concerns over the bill's funding of education research and a desire to discuss the bill's contents. First indications of these concerns were referred to in a November 13 CQNews article on a related bill: "The only other [education measure] that may have a chance of final adoption in the lame-duck session, a bill to overhaul federal education research (HR 4366), has been reported out of committee but may be hung up by disputes over funding."

The ASA and the American Educational Research Association had serious concerns with the bill because of its provisions to weaken NCESby removing presidential appointment of its commissioner and weakening its autonomy by transferring responsibilities to the Institute of Education Sciencesand worked over the summer to convince the Senate HELP committee to remove the few lines on these points. To read more about this and further background, see this September 18 ASA Community blog entry, Senate Panel Agrees to House Provisions Diminishing NCES Autonomy and Stature​.

With the issue sure to be considered again in the new Congress, the ASA will again work with AERA to advocate for a strong and autonomous NCES, the reasons for which are well articulated in this November Roll Call op-ed by former Census Directors Bob Groves and Ken Prewitt: Erosion of Federal Statistical Agencies Puts Sound Policy at Risk.

[12/31/14 update: See

The committee also chose to preserve much of what the House had suggested in determining the appointment of the heads of the research centers, including language that would make the appointment of the Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) a decision made by the IES Director rather than the President. This will help align the governance of NCES with all the other IES research centers to create a coherent governance structure at IES overall, as well as protect the NCES Commissioner position from political influence. It would also mirror the governance structure of two similar statistical agencies—the National Center for Health Statistics and the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics—which do not have Presidentially appointed directors. However, given the vital role of the NCES and its historical importance within the Department as the main entity charged with gathering and producing education statistics, the committee feels that NCES should maintain a degree of autonomy different from that of the other research centers within IES. To that end, the committee changed a provision in H.R. 4366 from requiring the IES Director’s approval of the NCES Commissioner’s plan for NCES activities to a provision that requires the NCES Commissioner to consult with the IES Director in the formulation of the plan. Rather than requiring the NCES Commissioner to have his or her Statistics Center plan approved by the IES Director, this change provides the NCES Commissioner with the needed flexibility and independence to marshal the resources and energies of the center in the direction and manner he or she sees fit.]

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