Skip Navigation
A gavel National Board for Education Sciences Members | Director's Priorities | Reports | Agendas | Minutes | Resolutions| Briefing Materials

Appendix B: NBES Resolutions Since its Inception


  1. Congress should designate the Institute of Education Sciences, in statute, as the lead agency for all congressionally authorized evaluations of U.S. Department of Education programs, responsible for all operations, contracts, and reports associated with such evaluations. (September 2006)
  2. Congress should allow the U.S. Department of Education to pool funds generated by the 0.5 percent evaluation set-aside from smaller programs. (September 2006)
  3. The U.S. Department of Education should use its "waiver" authority to build scientifically valid knowledge about what works in K-12 education. (September 2006)
  4. Congress, in authorizing and funding evaluations of federal education programs, should require [program] grantees, as a condition of grant award, to participate in the evaluation if asked, including the random assignment to intervention and control groups as appropriate. (April 2005)
  5. Congress should create, in statute, effective incentives for federal education program grantees to adopt practices or strategies meeting the highest standard of evidence of sizeable, sustained effects on important educational outcomes. (May 2007)
  6. Congress and the U.S. Department of Education should ensure that individual student data can be used by researchers (with appropriate safeguards for confidentiality) in order to provide evaluations and analyses to improve our schools. (September 2006)
  7. Congress revise the statutory definition of "scientifically based research" so that it includes studies likely to produce valid conclusions about a program's effectiveness, and excludes studies that often produce erroneous conclusions. (October 2007)
  8. The Board will review and advise the IES Director on grant awards where the proposed grantee is selected out of rank order of applicant scores that result from peer review for scientific merit. (January 2008)
  9. The Board commends the Secretary and the Department of Education for moving forward in developing new regulations and guidance about how to maintain confidentiality of educational data under FERPA while also providing for research uses of student and school data. The Department should finalize these regulations quickly, incorporating the major clarifications that have been submitted in comments. (May 2008)
  10. Congress should expand on the program of supporting statewide longitudinal data systems by requiring that states accepting funding under this program agree to make data in these systems available to qualified researchers (subject to FERPA) for the purpose of research that is intended to help improve student achievement. (May 2008)

Top