Dear Colleagues,
I am writing today to announce my departure from the National Center for Special Education Research, where I have served as Commissioner since 2023. On July 1, I will be returning to the special education faculty at Boston University. It is an understatement to say this is a bittersweet departure.
As I leave this roIe, I want to begin by acknowledging the special education research community. I am in awe of the work you do. This role has given me a unique vantage point, offering an up-close look at your research and the opportunity to promote and celebrate your achievements. I am convinced that NCSER grantees are an exemplar for the broader education research community. You are addressing practical challenges faced by classroom educators, leading to transformative approaches to teaching and learning. You are using research to challenge conceptions about what students with disabilities are capable of. You are fostering new and innovative approaches to ensuring that all families get access to the special education services their children deserve. And you are expanding the boundaries of what it means to do special education research, expanding further into understudied areas like postsecondary education, and exploring novel affordances of new and emerging technologies. I have witnessed countless examples of funded studies that have produced tangible programs and tools that are being taken up in schools across the nation.
I also want to thank the IES staff. For anyone new to the federal government, the experience can feel like learning a new language. I owe special thanks to my predecessor, Joan McLaughlin, and to NCSER’s Deputy Commissioner, Jackie Buckley, whose support helped me find my footing. It took me a good year before I stopped feeling like I was an impostor. One thing I wish the public could see up-close is just how committed the IES staff are to public service, to fulfilling the mission outlined in IES’s authorizing legislation. This was true throughout my tenure, but it became especially clear as IES adjusted staff responsibilities during a period of organizational change. The NCSER team has—despite expanded workloads—worked diligently to ensure that grantees continue to receive the high-quality technical assistance that IES has long prioritized. Much of this work has taken place behind the scenes, but I have been lucky enough to watch this collection of colleagues come together to support the field. It has been an honor to work alongside such brilliant, dedicated people. Similarly, IES is lucky to have had the steadfast leadership of Matt Soldner, Liz Albro, and Anne Ricciuti, whose institutional knowledge, judgment, and care for people have helped sustain IES through change, support staff, and advance the important work of the agency.
Three years went by quickly, but I am proud of what the NCSER team has accomplished during this time and of the foundation we have strengthened for the work ahead. Early in my tenure, we launched the SPARC Center to provide leadership on the special education teacher workforce, a center that continues to be relevant in the face of a national staffing crisis. Additionally, facing limited funding in FY24, NCSER elected to direct our investments toward research on systems-level special education improvements, complementing the individual- and classroom-based research that NCSER has long supported. You may have noticed an increased focus on bidirectional engagement in our most recent request for applications. This was an intentional change, meant to ensure that our funded studies were engaging key communities from the very beginning, not just at dissemination. Our team has similarly been developing resources to support NCSER grantees in more substantively including individuals with disabilities throughout the research process. Also, like all federal funders, we have spent considerable time responding to the changing landscape surrounding generative artificial intelligence and related technologies. Our National AI Institute for Exceptional Education, co-funded with the National Science Foundation (NSF), is developing groundbreaking tools to support students with speech and language needs. But I see it as a first step in a more extensive investment in future years.
Less visible to the public are some structural changes to improve NCSER’s ability to accomplish our work. During my time at IES, we hired three new program officers and promoted Jackie Buckley into the role of Deputy Commissioner to support the center’s ongoing leadership. We also sought collaboration with colleagues doing disability-related work within and outside of the department, including IES’s other centers (NCER, NCEE, and NCES), the Office of Special Education Programs, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Child and Human Development. Taken together, these steps have better positioned NCSER to collaborate across government and advance the work that matters most for students with disabilities.
There are also some puzzles we didn’t quite have a chance to solve, but I anticipate/hope NCSER and IES leadership will continue to work on them. Internally, we have spent considerable time exploring ways that IES could promote research use; this is not just about translating research into practice but in examining IES’s process for how we develop products and tools we develop in the first place. Also, as I have shared publicly to anyone who will listen, there is a real opportunity for NCSER to strengthen its impact by seeking out research in partnership with state departments of education, using state longitudinal data to open new avenues for research on improving outcomes for students with disabilities. Finally, I echo the many voices that have called on IES to find ways to accelerate the research process to provide more timely, relevant information to practitioners. With additional resources from Congress, NCER has made great strides with its Accelerate, Transform, Scale initiative. It is my hope that NCSER is similarly able to adopt strategies that help to bring innovative ideas to special education at scale.
One last note. A question I have been asked a lot as NCSER Commissioner has been to try to characterize NCSER’s impact. It’s a difficult question to answer because in education, tying research investments to specific outcomes is not easy. Educators and schools are not required to implement research-based practices, and tracking which practices and programs make their way into widespread use remains elusive. The influence of education research follows indirect pathways; knowledge is diffused through systems that make it difficult to trace back to the original research investments.
But I’ll say this. I was a middle school special education teacher from 2001 to 2004, the same year that NCSER was authorized. I cannot convey how radically different special education is today than it was when I left the classroom. Twenty-five-year-old Nate would have been absolutely blown away by the depth and breadth of what we have learned about improving academic and life outcomes for students with disabilities. Can I draw a direct causal arrow between NCSER’s founding and these huge steps forward? No, it would be very un-IES-like for me to do so. But the transformation in special education is undeniable, and what I can say with confidence is that NCSER has made many meaningful differences in the lives of students, educators, and families
In closing, I am so thankful to have gotten to sit in this seat and work alongside such a great team of colleagues. Even though I’ll be looking on from a different vantage point, I am thrilled to see what the NCSER community does in the coming years.
With deep gratitude,
Nate Jones
NCSER Commissioner
