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Dr. Rebecca Maynard National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance |
IES Director John Easton has announced the appointment of Rebecca Maynard, a distinguished scholar at the University of Pennsylvania and a national leader in education and social policy research, as the new Commissioner of the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance effective June 14.
"Dr. Maynard is an exceptional evaluator and researcher. She is among the very strongest specialists in this field, and she shares our belief that education research and evaluation should be useful and relevant and should help improve education policy and practice," Easton said.
Dr. Maynard served as University Trustee Chair Professor of Education and Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. For the past five years she has directed the University's Predoctoral Training Program in Education Sciences, an IES-funded program that supports 26 Ph.D. students annually from Arts and Sciences, Business, and Education. She helped develop the What Works Clearinghouse, and her work was instrumental in the creation of the Campbell Collaboration, an international association of public policy professionals who work to solve societal problems through scientific research and analysis.
As Commissioner, she will oversee NCEE, one of four centers in the Institute of Education Sciences. NCEE helps educators and policy makers make informed decisions about education programs through the work of its two divisions: Evaluation, which conducts large-scale evaluations of federally funded education programs and practices, including the education programs included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ; and Knowledge Utilization, which supports the synthesis and the widespread dissemination of research through the What Works Clearinghouse, 10 Regional Educational Laboratories and the ERIC library.
"Improving the nation's education system depends critically on the work of NCEE," Dr. Maynard said. "One of my key goals as Commissioner is to more effectively translate our scientific knowledge into products that are accessible and useful that education leaders can use to make better decisions and ultimately improve student outcomes."
A native of Maine, Dr. Maynard has published numerous academic pieces over the course of her career, including a recent update of her edited volume, Kids Having Kids: The Economic Costs and Social Consequences of Teen Pregnancy. Before joining the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, she spent 18 years at Mathematica Policy Research Inc., where she served as senior vice president. Dr. Maynard earned her B.A. in economics from the University of Connecticut and her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin.
About us:
The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) is one of the four centers of the Institute of Education Sciences. NCEE is responsible for conducting rigorous evaluations of federal programs, synthesizing and disseminating information from evaluation and research, and providing technical assistance to improve student achievement through the work of the evaluation division and the knowledge utilization division that includes the Regional Educational Laboratory Program; the What Works Clearinghouse, the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), and the National Library of Education.
NCEE's evaluation division focuses on conducting rigorous impact studies of promising education programs and practices that are supported through federal funds by conducting studies that will assess the impact of education programs on academic achievement, particularly in reading, mathematics, and science. The evaluation studies use methodologies that can provide credible scientific evidence to answer questions of effectiveness.
The programs administered by NCEE through the knowledge utilization division include the Regional Educational Laboratory Program that is designed to serve the educational needs of designated regions by bringing the latest and best research and proven practices into school improvement efforts; the What Works Clearinghouse synthesizes the best evidence of the effectiveness of education programs, policies, and practices and reports on up-to-date research findings available through its website at http://www.whatworks.ed.gov; the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) the largest education database in the world that provides the public with a centralized ERIC website for searching the ERIC bibliographic databases of more than 1.1 million citations; and the National Library of Education that collects and archives information, providing special historical and current collections of Department of Education documents, a collection of journals supporting the ERIC database, research reports supporting the What Works Clearinghouse, and resources supporting current and historical federal education legislation.
Overall, the combined activities of NCEE are designed to promote the adoption of rigorous evaluation designs and methodologies in federal and non-federal education evaluation studies; provide technical assistance through the 10 regional educational laboratories on evidence-based research; and widely disseminate information on rigorously conducted education research and evaluation to state and local educational agencies, institutions of higher education, Congress, parents, teachers, media and the general public on effective programs and practices that improve student achievement. NCEE is committed to providing quick and easy access to evidence-based information through online databases such ERIC and the What Works Clearinghouse.
For more information on the work of the NCEE evaluation and knowledge utilization divisions, consult NCEE Projects and Programs.
