Chapter 1

Introduction

Although education is a responsibility of the states, there is a strong and abiding national interest in who is getting educated and what they are learning. Since 1867, the Congress has authorized the Department of Education to obtain information on the condition of education for purposes of identifying emerging needs, determining how well programs are working, and promoting educational improvement. At the request of the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, we examined the condition of this information about education: that is, how and how well the information-gathering function has been carried out and what more could be done to improve the production and quality of information.

The Federal Role in
Education Information

Although the federal government currently spends nearly $20 billion annually to support education, its earliest task was gathering information. Federal involvement in education information dates back to 1867, when the Congress created a noncabinet Department of Education.' The department's initial mandate was to gather statistics on U.S. education. Although the federal role in education has changed during the many years since the department's inception, information-gathering has remained one of its important functions. Information-gathering units have expanded their scope beyond gathering statistics. Their work now includes, for example, the sponsorship of research and evaluating the educational programs administered by the Department of Education as well as technical assistance and dissemination.

Roles and Responsibilities of Information-Producing Units

During the 1970's, the responsibility for research, statistics, and evaluation were assigned to the National Institute of Education (NIE), the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), and the Office of Planning, Budget, and Evaluation (OPBE), respectively. There was some overlap of activities (for example, NIE and OPBE have conducted evaluations of programs), but these units have had fairly distinct information-gathering roles within the department. Their origins and missions are

1Although the Department of Education was not made a cabinet department until 1979, we refer to it as the Department of Education.

Introduction

described below. We also highlight how these missions have changed over time.2

The National Institute of
Education

The National Institute of Education was originally created in the Educa-
tion Amendments of 1972. In establishing NIE, the Congress declared
that to provide high quality education, "far more dependable knowledge
about the processes of learning and education than now exists or can be
expected from present research and experimentation" was required.
The legislation charged NIE with the responsibility of building "an effec-
tive educational research and development system."

NIE's mission as given in the public law was fairly general, leaving considerable flexibility in the development of the research function and specific areas of focus to its director and policymaking board, the National Council on Educational Research (NCER).3 In subsequent years, the Congress used legislation to indicate its priorities for the National Institute of Education. For example, listed among the priorities in the Educational Amendments of 1976 were improving student achievement in the basic skills, including reading and mathematics; improving the ability of schools to meet their responsibilities to provide equal educational opportunities, including students who are socially, economically, or educationally disadvantaged; and improving dissemination of the results of, and knowledge gained from, educational research and development. In addition to providing priority areas during the 1970's, the

2In the department's October 1985 reorganization, NIE and NCES were discontinued as separate agencies and all their functions and activities were assigned to the five operating units of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI). (The five units are Office of Research, Center for Education Statistics (CES), Programs for the Improvement of Practice, Information Services, and Library Programs.) The Center for Education Statistics performs most of the former responsibilities of NCES. And although some NIE responsibilities have been transferred to the new units, the Office of Research now carries out the activities of NIE that we discuss in this report. Because our review covers the period prior to the departmental reorganization, we refer to each unit by its name applicable during that period—that is, NIE, NCES, and OPBE.

3Since the reorganization, NCER has been renamed the National Advisory Council on Educational Research and Improvement. Although its purview has been expanded to include all activities in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, its role has been changed from policy to advisory.

Introduction

The National Center for
Education Statistics

Office of Planning, Budget, and
Evaluation

Congress increasingly required NIE to conduct specific studies, evaluations, and activities (for example, support for regional educational laboratories, national research centers, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress).4

The statistical activities that had been performed in the department since its early days were organized into the National Center for Education Statistics in 1974 (Public Law 93-380).5 As stated in the Education Amendments of 1974,

"the purpose of the Center shall be to collect and disseminate statistics and other data related to education in the United States and in other nations. The Center shall ... collect, collate, and, from time to time, report full and complete statistics on the condition of education in the United States; conduct and publish reports on specialized analyses of the meaning and significance of such statistics; . . . [and] review and report on education activities in foreign countries."

NCES was authorized to produce statistical data, but, in general, the type of information that was to be collected, and when and how it was to be collected were not initially specified by the Congress. Over time, the Congress has amended the mission of NCES by adding requirements for assistance to state and local education agencies to improve their statistical and data collection activities. Several special and recurring surveys were also mandated at various points over the past decade (for example, a survey of institutions of higher education and teacher demand-andshortage studies).

In 1970, the Office of Planning, Budget, and Evaluation became the department's central office for program evaluation activities. Although OPBE is not authorized by legislation, its responsibilities have included

4The laboratories conduct studies, disseminate research findings, and provide technical assistance to educational institutions in their assigned geographic regions; the national centers conduct research on the topics or issues they have received awards to study (for example, teaching, reading, and vocational education). Some national centers have been supported by NIE discretionary funds. Most of the support for the centers and all the support for the laboratories has been congressionally mandated, however. We refer to them collectively as the laboratories and centers. For some analyses, however, we discuss the mandated and discretionary laboratories and centers separately. In the recent reorganization, some mandated activities including the laboratories and the educational information dissemination centers were transferred from NIE to a newly created unit responsible for the improvement of educational practice. We discuss laboratories and centers further in chapter 2.

5NCES was made a statutory entity in 1974, and it was established administratively in January 1965 as a staff office reporting directly to the commissioner of education.