New Report Offers Vision, Strategy for Remaking National Center for Education Statistics

ALEXANDRIA, VA, August 25, 2026 —  The American Statistical Association today released A Vision and Strategy for Remaking the National Center for Education Statistics, a report from the ASA's project on re-envisioning NCES. Drawing on roundtable discussions with stakeholders across the education and statistical communities, the report lays out a vision and strategy for rebuilding the agency and invites broader public input to shape a roadmap for its future.

NCES is the nation's principal source of education statistics, producing data that informs decisions by states, school districts, colleges and universities, researchers and families. It also provides essential leadership and coordination of the education data infrastructure across the nation. In early 2025, the agency's staff was cut from 103 to 3, its commissioner was removed and roughly three-quarters of its contracts were canceled, effectively halting many of its statistical collections and production.

"There's near-universal agreement, across the political spectrum, that NCES's work is essential and must continue," said ASA Executive Director Ron Wasserstein. "But simply rebuilding NCES to what it looked like in 2024 would mean rebuilding the same weaknesses that left it so vulnerable. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do better."

Key Findings

  • Broad consensus on NCES's value: Stakeholders across sectors and the political spectrum agree NCES is uniquely positioned to play an essential and trusted federal role that cannot be replicated by states or the private sector alone in producing objective, comparable education statistics and anchoring the nation’s education data ecosystem. Indeed, the crowded field of information produced or released in the ecosystem—composed of states, universities, businesses, and others—makes NCES’s role so critical because the wealth of education data lacks established quality and public accountability needed for high-stakes decision-making.

  • The pre-2025 model was not working well enough: Even before last year's disruption, NCES's in-house capacity was insufficient for its mandated portfolio, and stakeholders agreed its products needed to be more timely and accessible and its data silos with other statistical agencies needed to be broken down to better inform policies like those around education to workforce transitions.

  • A rare opportunity for change: Rebuilding NCES with its former structure and operations would recreate the same structural weaknesses that left the agency vulnerable. The report calls for a fundamentally different approach.

  • Real costs to reduced capacity: With NCES's statistical work and its partnerships with states and other data users largely stalled, the report warns that gaps in the nation's education data infrastructure will become increasingly apparent the longer the disruption continues.

  • The keys to modernizing are well within reach. NCES’s distinct combination of responsibilities positions it at the intersection of two sets of critical infrastructure: the vertical education data system and the horizontal federal statistical system. It is therefore well positioned to bring the assets of one system to inform and advance the other, and to use them to improve statistics on the condition and progress of education in the United States. Therefore, if NCES pursues its three sets of responsibilities in an integrative and comprehensive manner, it has the potential to significantly elevate its value to the nation and the public good. 

A Vision and Strategy

The report envisions a future in which states, schools, communities and families have access to relevant, timely and objective education statistics. Realizing that vision, the authors argue, requires a strengthened NCES that anchors a healthy national education data ecosystem and partners closely with states—benefiting not just researchers and policymakers, but the students and families whose outcomes the data help improve.

The report’s strategy centers on shifting NCES from a survey-centric model to a curation-centric one, in which the agency prioritizes strengthening data infrastructure with states and others, so data collected locally is useful for national, state and local needs. This shift requires strengthening data governance and coordination efforts, some of which are running on fumes today, and growing state and NCES capacity for data curation. It also requires plugging NCES into federal statistical system innovation efforts as a beneficiary and eventual contributor and growing that system’s capacity to create datasets that answer questions no one agency can address alone. This approach, the authors argue, would allow NCES to accomplish more with available resources while strengthening its role at the intersection of the nation's education data ecosystem and the broader federal statistical system.

Calls to Action

The report calls on Congress, the administration, the Department of Education, and the broader stakeholder community to each play a role in advancing this vision, including the following:

  • Congress providing sufficient resources and conducting vigorous oversight to protect and empower NCES 

  • The administration launching a modernization effort for the federal statistical system

  • The Department of Education implementing the Evidence Act's Trust Regulation to support NCES's rebuilding

  • Stakeholders across the education and statistical communities building consensus around NCES's future and bringing additional voices into the conversation

Request for Feedback

The ASA is inviting feedback from the broader community to help shape the details of a fuller roadmap in the coming months. Those interested in contributing can submit input here.

Read the full report.

About the Project

The ASA's project on re-envisioning NCES brings together expertise from across the federal statistics and education policy communities to help chart a path forward for the agency following its dismantling in early 2025. The project builds on the ASA's related work assessing the health of the federal statistical system, including its ongoing assessment of the health of federal statistics.

About the American Statistical Association

The American Statistical Association is the world's largest community of statisticians and the oldest continuously operating professional science society in the United States.