IES Blog

On August 23, 2023, WestEd research and policy experts presented at a briefing focused on strengthening adult education and career pathways for Senate staff in Washington, DC. hosted by Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) and Senator Susan Collins (R-ME). The briefing drew from research and development WestEd is conducting for both IES (Adult Numeracy in the Digital Era: Adaptive Technology for Quantitative and Digital Literacy, ANDE) and the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (Adult Numeracy Instruction 2.0), as well as WestEd’s experience building and managing statewide adult education and postsecondary longitudinal dashboards and leading technical assistance on building data-informed accelerated pathways to living wage careers for adult learners.

NCER program officer Meredith Larson asked WestEd’s Dr. Ann Edwards about this briefing and how she understands the role of researchers and research in communicating with policymakers. As the principal investigator on the ANDE grant, Dr. Edwards has been involved in recent work in adult education and provided some context for the briefing and the work that was discussed.

How did this briefing come about?

Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Todd Young (R-IN) recently signaled their commitment to strengthening adult education by introducing the Strengthening Research in Adult Education Act. To deepen their understanding about the current state of research in the field, the co-chairs of the Senate Adult Literacy Caucus, Senators Reed and Collins (R-ME), co-hosted this briefing and asked WestEd to share what we are learning with a bipartisan group of Senate staff.

What were some of the main points made at the briefing?

We covered many topics, but we presented our interpretation of existing evidence. Some of our comments included the following:

• Much of the existing research on adult education is outdated or sparse. Existing research tends to focus on adult learning broadly or on adult learners in other contexts, with less attention paid to the unique educational needs and goals of learners in adult education programs. For example, some adult learners enroll in programs to pass a test for a job, continue their education, or improve their English language skills. These learner-centric goals aren’t always the focus of the research.
• Moving forward, we can build more knowledge of adult education by investing in studies that are situated in the actual adult education settings that adult learners can, and do, access. For example, much of our knowledge about how adults might learn and appropriate instructional practices for them draws from K-12 and higher education systems rather than the adult education system.
• When thinking about how to improve the adult education system, it’s important to understanding which strategies work for learners in adult education programs who face a wide range of life experiences as they balance jobs and family responsibilities. We need to consider the range of reasons they access programs and how these needs are changing. For example, in addition to foundational skills in numeracy and literacy (reading, writing, language), digital literacy is increasingly important for adult learners as they seek to achieve high school equivalency and look to engage in the workforce.
• Investing in research could help us modify and strengthen programs. We have seen how effective something like a research network (for example, the IES-funded CREATE Adult Skills Network) can be for rapidly generating new insights that can strengthen adult learning.
• We also identified a few specific areas where more research is necessary and could be key to adult education:
  • strengthening the adult educator workforce
  • identifying and applying literacy, numeracy, and English as a Second Language instructional practices developed specifically for adult learners
  • understanding promising models and instructional strategies that can be scaled across the adult education system
  • measuring short- and long-term outcomes of adult education programs
  • exploring the use of artificial intelligence to strengthen teaching and learning for adult learners

• To this end, there is room for strengthening adult education data collections that are connected to federal reporting and accountability systems. The adult education system needs rigorous and reliable data and research to know accurately what works for adult learners and what improvements are needed.

Why do you feel this sort of communication is important?

We hope that briefings can help congressional staff better understand the complexities of the adult education system and the uniqueness of this population. Additionally, we wanted to emphasize for policymakers the limits of existing research on adult learners. Because federal reporting requirements often dictate which data are collected, we wanted to suggest ways the federal government could improve data collection, integration, and reporting. We also wanted to underscore and illustrate how research, policy, and practice are connected in efforts to enhance adult education outcomes. Sharing our research and insights with Senate staffers can help inform their decisionmaking by grounding policy in research, and we believe that can help to improve outcomes and increase opportunities for the economic mobility of this often overlooked population.

Do you have any plans for future conversations with policymakers?

Yes, we plan to stay connected to policymakers and look forward to future opportunities to contribute our insights on research and policy. As Congress takes on new opportunities such as the Strengthening Adult Education Research Act or the reauthorization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), we hope they will turn to researchers and practitioners to learn about what is working in the field and how research can inform progress.

This blog was produced by Meredith Larson (Meredith.Larson@ed.gov), research analyst and program officer for postsecondary and adult education, NCER.

In this blog, NCER program officer, Dr. Meredith Larson, interviews Dr. Holly Xie from NCES about the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), an OECD-developed international survey  of adult skills in literacy, numeracy, and digital problem solving administered at least once a decade. PIAAC also collects information on adult activities (such as skill use at home or work, civic participation, etc.), demographics (such as level of education, race), and other factors (such as health outcomes). To date, NCER has funded three research grants (here, here, and here) and one training grant that relied on PIAAC data.

NCES has led the U.S. efforts in administering PIAAC and has been sharing results for over a decade. PIAAC in Cycle I (PIAAC I) included three waves of data collection in the United States with the first data released in 2013. From PIAAC I, we learned a wealth of information about the skills of U.S. adults. For example, the 2017 wave of data collection found that the percentages of U.S. adults performing at the lowest levels were 19 percent in literacy, 29 percent in numeracy, and 24 percent in digital problem solving. As we look forward to learning from PIAAC II, Dr. Xie reflects on the products from PIAAC I and possibilities for PIAAC II (release in 2024).

What is your role at NCES and with PIAAC specifically?

I am the PIAAC national program manager and oversee all aspects of the PIAAC study in the United States, including development and design, data collection, analysis and reporting, and dissemination/outreach. I also represent the United States at PIAAC international meetings.

What is something you’re particularly excited about having produced during PIAAC I?

I am most excited about the U.S. PIAAC Skills Map. The Skills Map provides information on adult skills at the state and county levels. Users can explore adult skills in literacy and numeracy in their state or county and get estimates of literacy or numeracy proficiency overall and by age and education levels. Or they can compare a county to a state, a state to the nation, or compare counties (or states) to each other. The map also has demographic and socioeconomic data from the American Community Survey (ACS) to provide context for the state or county estimates. This YouTube video demonstrates what the map can do.

We also have other PIAAC web products and publications such as national and international reports, Data Points, and PIAAC publications that provide invaluable information on U.S. adult skills and interrelationships of those skills to other social, economic, and demographic factors.

Do you have examples of how information from PIAAC I has been used?

PIAAC data cover results at the national, state, and county levels, and as such, they can be useful for policymakers or decision makers who would like to know where things stand in terms of the skills of their adult population and where they need to allocate resources at these different levels of the system. In other words, PIAAC data can be useful for drafting targeted policies and programs that will benefit their population and constituencies.

For instance, at the national level, former Vice President Biden used information from PIAAC I in his report Ready to Work for the June 2014 reauthorization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, known as WIOA. PIAAC was also cited in the discussion of extending the Second Chance Pell experiment as identified in the 2019 report titled Prisoners’ Eligibility for Pell Grants: Issues for Congress.

The Digital Equity Act of 2021 also leveraged the PIAAC. This legislation identifies particular populations that determine the funding formula. The quick guide to these populations uses PIAAC to estimate one of these populations: Individuals with a language barrier, including individuals who are English learners and have low levels of literacy.

Local governments have also used PIAAC products. For example, the Houston Mayor’s Office for Adult Literacy in collaboration with the Barbara Bush Foundation used the PIAAC Skills Map data to inform the Adult Literacy Blueprint.

And the adult education advocacy group, ProLiteracy, also used the PIAAC and the Skills Map to develop a toolkit for local program adult education and adult literacy program advocacy.

When will the results of PIAAC II be available, and how does this cycle differ from PIAAC I?

PIAAC II data collection began in 2022 and results will be released in December 2024 and will include information on the literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem-solving skills of adults in the United States. The numeracy assessment now includes a measure of “numeracy components,” which focus on number sense, smaller/bigger number values, measurement, etc. This information will help us learn more about the skills of adults who have very low numeracy skills. The adaptive problem-solving component is a new PIAAC module and will measure the ability to achieve one’s goals in a dynamic situation in which a method for reaching a solution is not directly available.

PIAAC II will also include, for the first time, questions about financial literacy in the background questionnaire, using items on managing money and tracking spending and income, savings methods, and budgeting. These additional questions will allow people to explore relationships between foundational skills, financial literacy, and other constructs in PIAAC.

What types of research could you imagine stemming from the PIAAC II?

One of the most unique features of PIAAC (both PIAAC I and II) is the direct assessment of literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills (information that no other large-scale assessment of adults provides). Thirty-one countries, including the United States, participated in PIAAC II (2022/23), so researchers will be able to compare the adult skills at the international level and also study trends between PIAAC I and PIAAC II.

It’s worth noting that the data collection took place while we were still experiencing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This may provide researchers opportunities to explore how the pandemic is related to adults’ skills, health, employment, training, and education status.

Where can the public access data from PIAAC?

Researchers can find information about the available data from the national U.S. PIAAC 2017 Household, PIAAC 2012/14 Household, and PIAAC 2014 Prison datasets, and international and trend datasets on the NCES Data Files page. PIAAC restricted-use data files contain more detailed information, such as continuous age and earnings variables, that can be used for more in-depth analysis. Accessing the restricted-use data requires a restricted-use license from NCES.

NCES also has an easy-to-use online analysis tool: the International Data Explorer (IDE). The IDE allows users to work directly with the PIAAC data and produce their own analyses, tables, regressions, and charts. An IDE tutorial video provides comprehensive, step-by-step instructions on how to use this tool. It contains detailed information about the content and capabilities of the PIAAC IDE, as well as how the PIAAC data are organized in the tool.

This blog was produced by Meredith Larson (Meredith.Larson@ed.gov), research analyst and program officer for postsecondary and adult education, NCER.

As part of the IES 20^th Anniversary, NCER is reflecting on the past, present, and future of adult education research. In this blog, Dr. Aydin Durgunoglu, Distinguished Global Professor Emeritus at the University of  Minnesota-Duluth, reflects on how her life and training have influenced her work. Dr. Durgunoglu is the principal investigator on Content-Integrated Language Instruction for Adults with Technology Support, one of the six research projects that comprise the CREATE Adult Skills Research Network.  As part of this network, Dr. Durgunoglu and her team are focusing on the needs of adult English learners and on U.S. history and civics education, such as what might be taught as part of Integrated English Literacy and Civics Education programs. Hers is the first grant NCER has funded that is focusing on this area for this population.

Please describe your IES project.

My colleagues and I are developing a curriculum called CILIA-T (Content-Integrated Language Instruction for Adults with Technology Support). We are embedding English instruction into U.S. History and Civics content and providing technology supports for both students and teachers as part of the curriculum. Our goal is to provide a complete and integrated resource that can be used by teachers with varying levels of experience in English as a Second Language (ESL), civics/U.S. history and citizenship classes.

What motivates you to do this work?

Two of my motivations are my background as an English learner and immigrant and my training as a cognitive psychologist.

I started learning English when I was 12 in an immersion-based approach. I recall some of the struggles I had such as misunderstanding that “you may sit down” was a full sentence in English because, in Turkish, the single word oturun has a similar meaning to the English sentence. This realization along with both Turkish and American experiences helped me to see the importance of culture, language, and instruction.

As a cognitive psychologist by training, I am interested in learning, memory, knowledge acquisition, and—most of all—language. One of my research areas has been how literacy develops across different languages—how it may progress differently in Spanish, Turkish, English, Hmong, etc. and whether it involves general cognitive processes that are language independent.

These experiences and interests have long influenced my work. For example, my colleagues and I collaborated on literacy projects for Mother Child Education Foundation (MOCEF) based in Turkey that have evolved and currently include a focus on women’s citizenship and empowerment. This work was based on my theoretical work on literacy development in Turkish. In the United States, I have conducted studies with adults and children on how what they know in their home languages can help them learn English (cross-language transfer). All of these experiences led me to our work as the CILIA-T team.

How are you leveraging your experiences to build CILIA-T?

In addition to my theoretical and applied experiences in adult education, this project is benefiting from the contributions of a group of dedicated adult educators. These colleagues are teaching ESL, citizenship, history, and civics classes. We are collaborating on writing a curriculum that teachers like themselves would like to use. Based on our experiences and findings from the field, we have identified the components that we feel are key for CILIA-T. Three of these main components include

1. Multimodal input:  Contrary to how I started learning English, providing linguistic input in several different modalities is helpful. Technology provides many opportunities to realize this goal. Learners can interact with and produce content in many forms. For example, they can create and share academic vocabulary sets and review them like a game. Technology can also facilitate deep conceptual understanding of academic topics. For example, learners can share and discuss not only texts but also audios and videos for a deeper analysis and application of civics and history topics.
2. Build on first languages (L1): Adults already have a well-developed language system or systems, if they know multiple languages. They use the clues from their L1 to understand how English operates. Therefore, we can provide opportunities to bring that existing linguistic knowledge to the forefront and to compare and contrast explicitly. One clear way to leverage L1 is to integrate oral language and help bridge what the adults can do orally with what they aim to do in reading and writing.
3. Academic vocabulary: Individuals with limited or interrupted schooling tend to have lower levels of academic vocabulary in their first language, and thus, likely lower levels in English. A language learner may be quite fluent in using English in their everyday interactions, but that does not mean they have a strong academic vocabulary across different domains, such as health, math, science, civics, and finance. CILIA-T covers academic and discipline-specific vocabulary in a purposeful way. Academic vocabulary is closely related to the conceptual understanding of a phenomenon. Therefore, just learning word definitions is not enough. The vocabulary has to be contextualized with a conceptual understanding. For example, executive branch does not mean much by itself unless it is situated within an understanding of an overall governmental system. Similarly, the definition of the word mortgage may be forgotten quickly if the learner is not familiar with the loan and repayment system in the United States. Luckily, adults have a lot of background knowledge to facilitate such conceptual scaffolding, but that is for another blog.

What value do you hope CILIA-T might bring to the students, teachers, and communities?

We believe that when all individuals, but especially the newcomers, understand the systems, practices, historical contexts, and the language(s) of their society, they can become more active participants in their communities and can work towards accomplishing their life goals more effectively. We hope that CILIA-T provides the adult learners and the educators and programs that support them with a tool to facilitate this growth.

This blog was produced by Dr. Meredith Larson (Meredith.Larson@ed.gov), research analyst and program officer at NCER.

April is National Bilingual/Multilingual Learner Advocacy Month! As part of the IES 20^th Anniversary celebration, we are highlighting NCER’s investments in field-initiated research. In this guest blog, Drs. Nikki Edgecombe (Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University) and George Bunch (University of California, Santa Cruz) discuss their IES-funded study focused on identifying the policies and practices that support multilingual learners (MLs) in community colleges, the important role of adult education English as a Second Language (adult ed ESL), and some of the lessons learned. MLs in community colleges, a significantly understudied population, include students who were classified as English learners in K-12 but also more recent arrivals to the US with a wide variety of education backgrounds and adult immigrants and refugees who have lived in the US for a number of years.  

Vital Role of Adult Education ESL

The demands on and opportunities for adult education programs, specifically adult ed ESL, are growing. The programs are affordable and accessible to immigrant communities and people with lower levels of academic preparation—many of whom were hit hard by the pandemic and disproportionately experienced negative education, health, and economic consequences. Simultaneously, the pandemic highlighted the increasing, critical need for multilingual workers across fields, including education, healthcare, and government. Adult ed ESL programs can help bring those workers into the labor market.

According to the National Reporting System for Adult Education, in program year 2021-22, nationally, free or low-cost adult education programs enrolled about 900,000 students, with nearly 50 percent in English language acquisition or integrated English literacy and civics education programs. Sixteen states house adult education programs in community and technical colleges, often in addition to other community-based and educational settings (see this site for information about state grants). These programs provide a unique opportunity for students to improve “everyday” English skills and serve as a ready-made pathway to a postsecondary credential. Yet, the programs and their students face a number of challenges. 

Asking the Questions Practitioners Want Answers To

For the last 4 years, we examined policies and practices that affect the experiences and outcomes of MLs in a large midwestern community college district. The research has focused on adult ed ESL, in part at the recommendation of our district partners. The district serves thousands of ESL students annually, and institutional leaders have actively pursued improvements to program access, instruction, and progression. As we learned more about the improvement efforts underway, we were able to gain a clearer picture of the stringent federal and state policies adult education operates under, which have at times challenged district leaders' ability to make the kinds of changes necessary to enhance student outcomes. Our institutional partners are not deterred, however, and continue to seek ways to strengthen their adult education program, make it more student-centered, and make policy more effective. They consider research an important resource in this improvement process. As such, we both documented their efforts and examined how the policy context affected what they were doing.

What We Are Finding

We wanted to better understand who the MLs are, their life circumstances, their college experiences, and their goals. We reported the following trends to our community college partners.  

• Adult ed ESL students are older and less likely to be working than their peers in credit programs. As a group, they are more likely to either have not earned a high school diploma or GED or have previously earned a baccalaureate degree or higher. Adult ed ESL students in our survey sample report enrolling in adult ed ESL to improve their everyday English literacy skills, to strengthen their employment prospects and prepare themselves for the language and literacy demands of further postsecondary education.
• The multiple ESL levels required by policy may generate obstacles to progression, particularly for students who initially place in the lower levels of the sequence. MLs in our partner district place into 1 of 6 adult ed ESL courses. As research has previously established, community college students rarely persist through long sequences of courses, and our preliminary administrative data analysis shows students in our sample generally persist for less than 2 semesters. In response, our district partner developed a full-time position to help students in the transitions into, through, and out of adult education; has offered short (4- and 8-week) courses; built out dedicated academic and nonacademic supports; and created an intentional on-ramp to credit programs. Nonetheless, the length of the sequence appears to undermine retention and progression.
• The prescribed assessment and placement procedures make it difficult for community college-based adult ed ESL programs to meet the varied English language learning needs of enrollees. Language learning is a complex phenomenon that requires students to develop a range of productive (speaking and writing) and receptive (listening and reading) literacy skills for a wide range of academic, professional, and community participation goals. That learning can look quite different for different students in different education environments and proficiency measurement is equally complex. Our district partner used one of the federally mandated assessments to both place students and measure their proficiency gains. The test is relatively inexpensive and easy to administer, but it only measures reading, just one aspect of language proficiency, leaving no consistent record of proficiency levels in speaking, listening, and writing.

New Directions in Adult Ed ESL Policy Research

Early findings from the study have the potential to inform changes in policy and practice at our district partner. Our findings also raise issues that federal and state policymakers and practitioners working on the ground may need to work together to answer, including how policy systems can balance the perceived need for standards and accountability with community colleges’ need to structure and administer the programs in ways that best meet the needs of MLs.

To pursue this line of inquiry, we will explore the origin and rationale for adult ed ESL policy and how that policy translates from federal to state to institutional providers. We will also learn more about the goals and experiences of adult ed ESL students coming out of the pandemic, explore the perceptions and experiences of adult educators and program staff, and provide formative feedback on the reform efforts underway at our district partner with a particular focus on whether and how policy is helping or hindering their ability to meet their goals.

This blog was produced by Dr. Meredith Larson (Meredith.Larson@ed.gov), research analyst and program officer at NCER.

As part of the IES 20^th Anniversary, NCER is reflecting on the past, present, and future of adult education research. In this blog, Dr. Daphne Greenberg, Distinguished University Professor at Georgia State University, reflects on her connection to adult education and gives advice to researchers interested in this field. Dr. Greenberg has served as the principal investigator (PI) on three NCER grants, including the Center for the Study of Adult Literacy, and is also co-PI on three current NCER grants (1, 2, 3). She helped found the Georgia Adult Literacy Advocacy group and the Literacy Alliance of Metro Atlanta and has tutored adult learners and engaged in public awareness about adult literacy, including giving a TedTalk: Do we care about us? Daphne Greenberg at TEDxPeachtree.

What got you interested in adult education research?

During graduate school, I was a volunteer tutor for a woman who grew up in a southern sharecropper family, did not attend school, and was reading at the first-grade level. Her stories helped me understand why learning was important to her. For example, her sister routinely stole money from her bank account because she couldn’t balance her checkbook.

I began wondering whether adults and children reading at the same level had similar strengths and weaknesses and whether the same word-reading components were equally important for them. I later published an article that became a classic in adult literacy research about this.

Over the years, I have grown to admire adult learners for their unique stories and challenges and am deeply impressed with their “grit” and determination even when faced with difficulties. When I watch a class of native-born adults reading below the 8th grade levels, I am inspired by them and yet deeply conflicted about our K-12 system and how many students aren’t getting what they need from it.

How does your personal experience influence your perspective?

I think my childhood and family planted the seeds. My grandfather ran a grocery store but had only a third-grade education. My parents were immigrants who worked hard to navigate a new culture and language, and I struggled with reading in English and English vocabulary growing up. As a result, I understand how people hide and compensate for academic weaknesses.

Also, my brother has profound autism. As a child, I insisted that I could teach him many skills, and I did. This taught me patience and the joy one feels when even the smallest gain is made.

As an adult, I mess up idioms, use Hebraic sentence structure, and need help with editing. I also have a visual condition that causes me to miss letters when I read and write. These difficulties help me relate to the struggles of adult learners. I often feel deep embarrassment when I make mistakes. But I am very fortunate that I have colleagues who celebrate my strengths and honor my weaknesses. Not all of our adult learners are as fortunate.

What should researchers new to adult education know about the system?

Adult education serves students with significant needs and numerous goals—from preparing for employment or postsecondary education to acquiring skills needed to pass the citizenship exam or helping their children with homework. But the adult education system has less public funding than K-12 or postsecondary systems.

Many of the educators are part-time or volunteers and may not have a background in teaching—or at least in teaching adults. There just aren’t the same level of professional development opportunities, technological and print instructional resources, infrastructure, or supporting evidence-based research that other education systems have. 

What should researchers know about adult learners?

As a starting point, here are three things that I think researchers should know about adult learners:

• What it means to live in poverty. For example, I once worked with a researcher who, when told that adult learners wouldn’t have access to the internet, replied “That’s not an issue. They can take their laptops to a Starbucks to access the Internet.”
• That adult learners are motivated. The fact that they have inconsistent attendance does not mean that they are not motivated. It means that they have difficult lives, and if we were in their shoes, we would also have difficulty attending on a regular basis.
• That adult learners’ oral vocabulary often matches their reading vocabulary. If you want adult learners to understand something, such as informed consents, realize that their oral vocabulary often is very similar to their reading grade equivalencies and consider simplifying complex vocabulary and syntax structure.

What specific advice do you have about conducting research with adult learners?

Testing always takes longer to complete than anticipated. I never pull students out from classes for testing because their class time is so precious. So they have to be available after or before class to participate in research, and this can be problematic. We often need to reschedule an assessment because public transportation is late, a job shift suddenly changes, or a family member is sick.

Finding enough of particular types of students is difficult because sites often attract different demographics. For example, one site may have primarily 16- and 17-year-olds, another site may have mostly non-native speakers, and another site may have either lower- or higher-skilled adult learners.

Having a “clean” comparison group at the same site is challenging because of intervention “leakage” to nonintervention teachers.  Adult education teachers are often so hungry for resources that they may try to peak into classrooms while an intervention is in process, get access to materials, or otherwise learn about the intervention. Their desire for anything that might help students makes contamination a concern.  

What areas of adult education could use more research?

I think that policymakers and practitioners would benefit from many areas of research, but two come to mind.

• How to measure outcomes and demonstrate “return”: Many funding agencies require “grade level” growth, but it can take years for skills to consolidate and manifest as grade level change. In the meantime, adults may have found a job, gotten promoted, feel more comfortable interacting with their children’s schools, voted for the first time, etc. Are we measuring the right things in the right way? Are we measuring the things that matter to students, programs, and society? Should life improvements have equal or even more weight than growth on standardized tests? After how much time should we expect to see the life improvements (months, years, decades)?
• How to create useful self-paced materials for adults who need to “stop-out”: Due to the complexities of our learners’ lives, many have to “stop-out” for a period before resuming class attendance. These adults would benefit from resources that they could use on their own, at their own pace during this time. What is the best practice for delivery of these types of resources? Does this “best practice” depend on the adult’s ability level? Does it depend on the content area? 

Any final words for researchers new to adult education?

I extend a warm welcome to anyone interested in research with adult learners. You will discover that many adult learners are eager to participate in research studies. They feel good helping researchers with their work and are hopeful that their time will help them or be of help to future learners. I highly recommend that you collaborate with researchers and/or practitioners who are familiar with the adult education context to help smooth the bumps you will inevitably experience.

This blog was produced by Dr. Meredith Larson (Meredith.Larson@ed.gov), research analyst and program officer at NCER.