U.S. Department of Education (ED)

ED’s Commissioner for the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) provides leadership as the agency’s evaluation officer. The Institute of Education Sciences, NCEE’s parent agency, is primarily responsible for education research, evaluation and statistics. ED also has an evaluation governance structure led by the Evidence Leadership Group (ELG), which supports program staff that runs evidence-based grant competitions and monitors evidence-based grant projects. The ELG advises ED leadership and staff on how evidence can be used to improve agency programs and provides support to staff in the use of evidence. It is co-chaired by the evaluation officer and the director of grants policy in the Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. Members meet monthly for the purposes of ensuring ongoing coordination of Evidence Act work.

ED has executive leadership and a governance structure that is responsible for coordinating data governance, collection, sharing and analysis. The Office of the Chief Data Officer (OCDO) is led by the chief data officer (CDO), whose responsibilities include lifecycle data management and developing and enforcing data governance policies. The OCDO has oversight over ED’s information collection approval and associated White House Office of Management and Budget clearance process, except where those functions have been delegated to the statistical official as required by the Evidence Act. The OCDO is responsible for developing and enforcing the agency’s open data plan, including management of a centralized, comprehensive data inventory accounting for all data assets across the department.

The ED Data Governance Board (DGB) sponsors agency-wide actions to develop an open data culture. It works to improve ED’s capacity to leverage data as a strategic asset for evidence-building and operational decisions, including developing the capacity of data professionals in program offices. It is chaired by the CDO, with the statistical officer, evaluation officer, and performance improvement officer as ex-officio members. The evaluation officer, CDO, and statistical officer meet monthly for the purposes of ensuring ongoing coordination of Evidence Act work. Each leader or designee also participates in the performance improvement officer’s Strategic Planning and Review process. Additionally, the tactical Data Coordinator Council, established under the DGB charter with representation from each principal office, facilitates the execution of DGB policies, ED’s Data Strategy, data maturity improvements across principal offices, and the development of solutions to tactical challenges assigned by the DGB.

ED invests program funds in evaluation and uses findings to advance its mission. As of August 2024, the agency had invested $280.9 million in FY 2024 in high-quality evaluations of federal programs, evaluations as part of field-initiated research and development, technical assistance related to evaluation and evidence-building, and capacity-building. This includes work awarded by centers across the Institute of Education Sciences. The $280.9 million investment represents 0.55% of ED’s $51.4 billion FY 2024 discretionary congressional appropriation, net of administrative and other costs.

However, ED has no specific budget for federal program evaluation. Evaluations are supported either by: (a) required or allowable program funds, (b) Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Section 8601, which permits the Secretary to reserve up to 0.5% of selected ESEA program funds for rigorous evaluation, or (c) language in recent appropriations bills that permit the ED Secretary to reserve up to 0.5% of appropriated funds from select programs authorized by the Higher Education Act, as amended, for purposes including research and evaluation.

ED’s Evaluation Policy was approved by the Office of the Secretary in August 2020. It reaffirms the department’s commitment to five core principles in program evaluation: (1) independence and objectivity, (2) relevance and utility, (3) rigor and quality, (4) transparency, and (5) ethics. The Annual Evaluation Plan describes its most significant evaluation activities. ED’s Learning Agenda was released as part of the agency’s Strategic Plan in July 2022. It outlines the priority learning questions that the department seeks to answer between FY 2022 and FY 2026, and is organized across six focal areas, including strengthening student learning and postsecondary access and completion.

ED’s Learning Agenda is integral to its evidence-building pipeline, which prioritizes developing, testing and refining evidence-based educational strategies. This pipeline begins by identifying innovative and promising approaches and then adapting these approaches as new evidence emerges. Finally, rigorous evaluations confirm their effectiveness in enhancing student outcomes. Key department offices and programs — like the Grants Policy Office, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Education Innovation and Research Program, and the Institute of Education Sciences — utilize this pipeline approach, incorporating data from sources like the National Assessment of Education Progress to strengthen evidence-based practices.

Through Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs) and technical assistance, ED seeks to build state and local capacity to evaluate programs. The agency has at least one NOFO explicitly stating that improving the integration of data systems and overall data infrastructure to measure outcomes is a permissible use of grant funds. ED’s State Longitudinal Data Systems grant program is the most notable example of encouraging data integration, including a priority for “infrastructure and interoperability” and “creat[ing] a [data] linkage that did not already exist.”

The agency awards grants to technical assistance centers to improve state data capacity elsewhere. One example is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Data Center, which supports state efforts to collect, report, analyze and use high-quality IDEA data. Current ED NOFOs also name project evaluation and improving data and evaluation as allowable; one example is the award for technical assistance on state data collection. The department also provides technical assistance through its State Support Team. ED also provides evaluation capacity building to grantees in several discretionary grant programs, including the Education Innovation and Research Program and the Postsecondary Student Success Grants Program. The agency’s Regional Educational Laboratories have developed a “self-service” curriculum, or toolkit, for states, districts and other education entities to strengthen their program evaluation capacity.

ED uses performance management practices to improve the operational decision-making process and create a culture of accountability to achieve equitable outcomes. The agency’s performance improvement officer (PIO) oversees the performance management system. Each quarter, the PIO issues a data call to solicit updates to performance metrics aligned with agency goals and strategic objectives. An internal system captures metric data, associated narrative data (e.g., examples of activities included in a count), and an indicator of progress toward goals. 

Once data are collected, the cross-office team responsible for a given goal meets to review performance data and prepare a quarterly update for the Deputy Secretary and the department-wide performance review team, including plans for accelerating progress toward the stated goal. Reports are then reviewed at quarterly meetings of the ED-wide performance team to identify additional opportunities to support goal-directed work and prioritize action.

In addition to the work done by the PIO and team, ED uses performance data to achieve equitable outcomes. ED’s FY 2025 Performance Plan and 2023 Performance Report include performance management of several related strategic goals, including: (a) to promote equity in student access to educational resources, opportunities and inclusive environments; (b) to support a diverse and talented educator workforce and professional growth to strengthen student learning; and (c) to increase postsecondary value by focusing on equity-conscious strategies to address access to high-quality institutions, affordability, completion, post-enrollment success and support for inclusive institutions.

ED proactively engages and empowers residents and community partners to inform policy development, program design and delivery processes, emphasizing historically underserved communities. The department is pleased to host four White House Initiatives (WHI) for community engagement, each involving ED staff and an external advisory board. The WHIs advance educational equity, excellence and economic opportunity for Black Americans and Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanics and Hispanic-serving institutions, and Native Americans and Tribal colleges and universities.

Separately, ED hosts the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Finally, under the Biden-Harris Administration, ED launched its Office of Strategic Partnerships (OSP). In addition to engaging the communities listed above, OSP is ED’s primary liaison to the philanthropic and business communities. Contemporaneously with the development of the Strategic Plan, the department published a Request for Information in the Federal Register to solicit feedback on the learning agenda’s six focus areas. The department received more than 30 comments, including from individuals, universities, university-based researchers, philanthropies, advocates and advocacy organizations. Those organizations included, but were not limited to, those representing students historically underserved by education systems. Finally, consistent with ED’s Agency Evaluation Policy, its Institute for Education Sciences’ National Center for Education Evaluation, which conducts the agency’s significant evaluations, engages a wide range of stakeholders in evaluation design via study-specific Technical Working Groups that include ED program staff, highly-qualified researchers, subject matter expert, educators, education policymakers and representatives of beneficiary communities.

ED’s current Strategic Plan includes measurable goals to achieve equitable outcomes informed by underserved communities. The agency tracks progress toward key goals in the plan, which also includes strategic objectives, implementation steps and performance objectives.

FY 2024-25 Agency Priority Goals (APGs) were developed based on the priorities of the Administration and the ED’s Secretary and informed by engagement with internal and external stakeholders, including educators, education policymakers, state and local leaders, education researchers and related organizations, advocacy organizations, and students and families. Several of ED’s FY 2024-25 APGs are specifically aligned to meet the needs of underserved communities, including APG1 (eliminating educator shortages, aligned to Objective 2.2, supporting rural and high-poverty districts), APG2 (supporting the mental health needs of all students), and APG4 (expediting academic recovery, emphasizing schools that serve majority high-needs students). The Annual Performance Plan and Report also shows how ED tracks progress toward goals through annual reporting.