Purpose: The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) provides a highly important resource for the nation through its longitudinal surveys of student growth and achievement.  These surveys have yielded evidence to support a wide range of scientific investigations of learning and development for more than 40 years.  Over this time, significant changes have occurred in the demography of the U.S. student population, in the technology available for research, and in the data available beyond the national surveys.  A workshop in November 2013 was convened to explore ideas regarding how NCES surveys could better align with changing needs of education researchers and maximize the potential of evolving research methodologies.