Request for Information

Issuing agencies

Abstract

NCES seeks comment on the strategic redesign of its portfolio of studies, including administrative data collections and sample surveys, both cross-sectional and longitudinal.

Full Text

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<title>Federal Register, Volume 91 Issue 208 (Thursday, October 29, 2026)</title>
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[Federal Register Volume 91, Number 208 (Thursday, October 29, 2026)]
[Notices]
[Pages 68118-68120]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [<a href="http://www.gpo.gov">www.gpo.gov</a>]
[FR Doc No: 2026-22047]


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DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

[Docket No.: ED-2027-XXX-XXXX]


Request for Information

AGENCY: National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Institute of 
Education Sciences (IES), Department of Education (ED).

ACTION: Request for Information.

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SUMMARY: NCES seeks comment on the strategic redesign of its portfolio 
of studies, including administrative data collections and sample 
surveys, both cross-sectional and longitudinal.

DATES: We must receive your comments by December 3, 2026.

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ADDRESSES: Comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking 
Portal at <a href="http://regulations.gov">regulations.gov</a>. However, if you require accommodation or 
cannot otherwise submit your comments via <a href="http://regulations.gov">regulations.gov</a>, please 
contact the program contact person listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION 
CONTACT. The Department will not accept comments by email or by fax. To 
ensure that the Department does not receive duplicate copies, please 
submit your comments only once. Additionally, please include the Docket 
ID at the top of your comments.
    Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to <a href="http://www.regulations.gov">www.regulations.gov</a> to submit 
your comments electronically. Information on using Regulations.gov, 
including instructions for accessing agency documents, submitting 
comments, and viewing the docket, is available on the site under the 
``FAQ'' tab.
    Privacy Note: The Department's policy for comments received from 
members of the public is to make these submissions available for public 
viewing in their entirety on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at 
<a href="http://www.regulations.gov">www.regulations.gov</a>. Therefore, commenters should be careful to include 
in their comments only information that they wish to make publicly 
available. We encourage, but do not require, that each respondent 
includes their name, title, institution or affiliation, and the name, 
title, mailing and email addresses, and telephone number of a contact 
person for the institution or affiliation, if any. IES will not 
directly respond to comments.
    This is a request for information only. This RFI is not a request 
for proposals (RFP) or a promise to issue an RFP. This RFI does not 
commit the Department to contract for any supply or service whatsoever. 
Further, we are not seeking proposals for evaluation and will not 
accept unsolicited proposals. The Department will not pay for any 
information or administrative costs that you may incur in responding to 
this RFI. The documents and information submitted in response to this 
RFI will not be returned.
    Accessible Format: By request to the program contact person listed 
under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT, individuals with disabilities 
can obtain this document in an accessible format. The Department will 
provide the requestor with an accessible format that may include Rich 
Text Format (RTF) or text format (txt), a thumb drive, an MP3 file, 
braille, large print, audiotape, or compact disc, or another accessible 
format.
    Electronic Access to This Document: The official version of this 
document is the document published in the Federal Register. You may 
access the official edition of the Federal Register and the Code of 
Federal Regulations at <a href="http://www.govinfo.gov">www.govinfo.gov</a>. At this site you can view this 
document, as well as all other documents of this Department published 
in the Federal Register, in text or Portable Document Format (PDF). To 
use PDF you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available free on 
the site.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Matthew Soldner, Acting NCES 
Commissioner. You may email your questions to <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#a3ede0e6f0e0cccececad0d0cacccdc6d1e3c6c78dc4ccd5"><span class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="f6b8b5b3a5b5999b9b9f85859f99989384b69392d8919980">[email&#160;protected]</span></a>, 
but as described above, comments must be submitted via the Federal 
eRulemaking Portal at <a href="http://regulations.gov">regulations.gov</a>. If you are deaf, hard of 
hearing, or have a speech disability and wish to access 
telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Background

    The mission of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is to: 
``Provide national leadership in expanding fundamental knowledge and 
understanding of education from early childhood through postsecondary 
study, in order to provide parents, educators, students, researchers, 
policymakers, and the general public with reliable information about, 
including the condition and progress of education in the United States, 
including early childhood education and special education; educational 
practices that support learning and improve academic achievement and 
access to educational opportunities for all students; and the 
effectiveness of Federal and other education programs.'' (See: 20 
U.S.C. Sec.  9511).
    IES carries out that mission through four centers, including the 
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). NCES is specifically 
responsible for collecting and analyzing education-related statistical 
data. ESRA requires NCES to ``collect, report, analyze, and disseminate 
statistical data related to education in the United States and in other 
nations, including--(1) collecting, acquiring, compiling (where 
appropriate, on a State-by-State basis), and disseminating full and 
complete statistics (disaggregated by the population characteristics 
described [below]) on the condition and progress of education, at the 
preschool, elementary, secondary, postsecondary, and adult levels in 
the United States . . .'' (See: 20 U.S.C. 9543).
    Like its fellow Centers, NCES is seeking to align its priorities 
more closely with state and local education needs, accelerate the speed 
at which high-quality data and evidence are produced, and increase the 
use of those data and evidence by educators and policymakers so that 
student outcomes can be dramatically improved. This RFI seeks public 
comment on how it might do each.

The Challenge

    The task of comprehensively describing the condition of education 
is daunting. The statutory remit that Congress has established for 
NCES, which spans multiple levels of education and topics in both the 
domestic and international context, is already an ambitious one. 
Further complicating its work is the breadth of stakeholders that NCES 
seeks to serve. The Center considers state and federal policymakers, 
students and families, educators, researchers, business leaders, and 
the media to be key constituents for its products--and is cognizant 
that each has its own information needs. As evidenced by the multiple 
observers who have commented as such, the need for NCES to prioritize 
what it collects, for whom, and for what purpose is a well-understood 
concern.
    Perhaps less well understood is the role of time in NCES's work. 
When time is considered as a factor in NCES work, it is most often 
operationalized as ``the speed with which data are collected and 
released.'' This is neither unsurprising nor wrong: the production of 
statistics in a timely manner is a core function of a statistical 
agency because the timeliness of data directly impacts its utility. But 
time and its passage is more than just a metric by which NCES's 
operational efficiency can be judged (though it should be that, too).
    As time passes, the conditions that surround education change--
sometimes profoundly--and stakeholders' information needs can change in 
turn. NCES has not, to date, adopted a process of strategic foresight 
designed to systematically envision potential futures and the 
information needs they demand. Over time, this has the potential to 
minimize the value of the data NCES produces because, due to changing 
conditions, data products may not be maximally responsive to the issue 
of the day. Honing this skill and leveraging its outcomes as NCES 
considers its portfolio of work is a critical element in any strategic 
redesign effort.

Purpose of This RFI

    NCES seeks to develop a framework that can guide the strategic 
redevelopment of its portfolio of work. To do so, NCES is soliciting 
insights

[[Page 68120]]

from experts and innovators in state and local education policy and 
practice, federal statistics, data collection methods, and other 
interested stakeholders to address questions such as:
    1. What data do states and districts, educators, and families 
currently most need to inform their efforts to improve outcomes for all 
learners?
    2. How can we prepare data collections for future data needs 
reflecting the potential for changed educational conditions and 
challenges?
    3. What data collection methods are best suited to meet current and 
evolving information needs?
    4. How might data collection and dissemination be optimized for 
future Super Intelligence or SI (formerly referred to as Artificial 
Intelligence or AI) applications and uses?
    5. What dissemination methods are best suited to meet the 
information needs of NCES's diverse audiences?
    6. Which data collection and dissemination methods are most 
efficient, optimizing the value of the outputs generated by those 
activities and the resources needed to execute them?
    7. What federal, state, local, and industry partnerships are needed 
to enable those methods and make the most of the data NCES collects?

Additional Areas of Interest

    We also welcome comments on the two issues below.
    1. NCES is particularly interested in minimizing burden on 
respondents, particularly in the context of declining survey response 
rates. However, NCES is committed to the utility of the data it 
provides to the public. How might NCES prioritize and streamline its 
data collections to balance respondent burden and benefit?
    2. Historically, NCES has sought to maximize the potential value of 
its data by developing data assets and products for non-technical 
audiences. This has included extensive derivation of analytic variables 
drawing across multiple study data sources, imputation designed to 
maximize data's analytic utility, and the development of extensive user 
documentation. These activities necessarily compete with NCES's 
timeliness goals. How might NCES resolve this tension in a way 
consistent with its responsibilities as statistical agency serving the 
public?

Matthew Soldner,
Acting Commissioner, National Center for Education Statistics.
[FR Doc. 2026-22047 Filed 10-28-26; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4000-01-P


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