The National Association of Scholars (NAS) joins other education reformers in urging the Trump administration to consider thoughtfully its reform plans for the Education Department’s (ED) Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Much of what ED does is useless or counterproductive. IES actually produces useful material. The National Center for Education Statistics’ National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is particularly useful. Whatever the ultimate disposition of ED, we believe that much of IES ought to be preserved in some administrative home.
We recognize that this is a complicated issue. The great good done by the IES is to produce statistical information that is national in scope and that has been produced for enough years that it can provide substantial assistance to researchers who need comparable statistical data from different years. The IES’ statistical information is good in itself—and it also provides a good way to cross-check statistics provided by the states. States can manipulate their own measures of education proficiency—and when they do, IES’ statistics provide a way for states’ citizens to check about whether their state bureaucracies are providing honest statistics. America benefits when our different levels of government provide multiple statistical measures on educational attainment for the benefit of our citizens.
That does not mean that IES is an unquestionable good. Ideologically extreme activists can seize hold of any part of government, certainly including educational measures. What if a national U.S. History exam measures knowledge of progressive half-truths and misinformation? What if a national science exam measures commitment to “climate justice activism”? Then too, IES could be infested by goldbrickers as much as any other part of the government. IES should not be immune to the Trump administration’s reform campaign. It deserves scrutiny.
We judge, on balance, that much of IES should survive—and that the Trump administration should take time to examine how IES works before they reform it. When they have examined it, and determined what parts are functional and worth preserving, we suggest that those portions might be relocated to the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. Another possible new home for IES is the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. Parts of IES can and should do good for America, housed within some component of the federal government.
We put lamb’s blood on the doorpost of IES, that the destroyer might pass over it. Or at any rate, take a minute to think about whether it might be better to amble to the next door down the street.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
