On February 27th, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) released the report, “Reimagining the Institute of Education Sciences: A Strategy for Relevance and Renewal.” Dr. Amber Northern, Senior Vice President for Research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, co-authored the report with Adam Opp, Special Assistant at ED. Dr. Northern was appointed by Education Secretary Linda McMahon in May 2025 as a Senior Advisor, specifically tasked with re-envisioning IES.
The report draws on nearly 400 discussions and more than 230 public comments— including FABBS’s own October 2025 Request for Information (RFI) submission on Redesigning IES. The report is a well-researched document that explicitly affirms IES’s statutory independence, its 20-year research record, and the critical role of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Dr. Northern identified “six big shifts”:
- Focus grantmaking on three to five high-priority challenges identified with input from state and district leaders.
- Modernize the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data collections, including a review of longitudinal studies and faster data release.
- Prioritize multi-state awards to test whether interventions scale across diverse contexts.
- Require practical dissemination as a condition of grant milestone payments.
- Reform the Regional Educational Labs (RELs) through a new coordinating “Hub” structure.
- Narrow the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), shifting to AI-driven evidence synthesis and practice guides.
As previously reported (see past FABBS article), the report arrives in the aftermath of significant institutional damage to IES. It is important to note that many of these recommendations describe work that was already underway before the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the administration froze funding, terminated contracts, and reduced staff. The dismantling of IES was not a necessary prerequisite for this strategic shift. The report offers no acknowledgment of this disruptive history, nor does it address who will implement this vision or provide staffing updates.
FABBS’s October RFI comments called for better coordination across IES centers, improved data accessibility and integration, stronger dissemination pathways to practitioners, and streamlined grantmaking and peer review. The new report is aligned with most of these recommendations.
FABBS recommended IES build on the 2022 NASEM report, The Future of Education Research at IES, as a foundation for reform. The report does not make any reference to the NASEM document — a meaningful gap given that NASEM’s report represents the scientific community’s carefully developed blueprint for strengthening the agency.
FABBS urged for robust congressional oversight and a fully operational National Board for Education Sciences (NBES) to provide meaningful accountability in any restructuring. The report affirms IES’s independence and includes NBES in its recommendations, but it doesn’t address whether the Board is currently functional. If and when Congress takes up ESRA reauthorization (legislation that hasn’t been updated since 2002), those are the questions that will need answers.
Dr. Northern will be speaking to the Friends of IES this week.
