Institute of Education Sciences
United States Department of Education research branch

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is the independent, non-partisan statistics, research, and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Education. IES' stated mission is to provide scientific evidence on which to ground education practice and policy and to share this information in formats that are useful and accessible to educators, parents, policymakers, researchers, and the public. It was created as part of the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002.
The first director of IES was Grover Whitehurst, who was appointed in November 2002 and served for six years. As of March 2024, Matthew Soldner is the acting Director of IES.
Divisions
IES is divided into four major research and statistics centers:
National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE)—NCEE conducts large-scale evaluations and provides research-based technical assistance and information about high-quality research to educators and policymakers in a variety of different formats. NCEE's work includes evaluations of education programs and practices supported by federal funds; the Regional Educational Laboratory Program; the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC); the What Works Clearinghouse; and the National Library of Education. Matthew Soldner is the Commissioner of NCEE.
National Center for Education Research (NCER)—NCER supports research to improve student outcomes and education quality in the United States and pursue workable solutions to the challenges faced by educators and the education community. NCER also supports training programs to prepare researchers to conduct high quality, scientific education research. Elizabeth Albro is the Commissioner of NCER.
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)—NCES is the primary federal entity that collects and analyzes data related to education in the US and other nations. Among the programs and initiatives that NCES oversees is the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
“Institute of Education Sciences” enters the record as united States Department of Education research branch. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Institute, Education and Sciences can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Institute of Education Sciences” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Institute, Education and Sciences provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6040253. VIAF identifies the subject as 137057788. The Library of Congress control number is no2003007415. Authority coordinates are 38.883, -77.028. 1 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2002 and 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “Institute of Education Sciences” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.