Reaping the Benefits of Investment: National Educational Datasets Support School Success

ABSTRACT We describe core tensions as to the federal government's role in the funding, focus, and locus of education in the United States: is public education a federal responsibility, if so, does that imply funding public schools or allocating public funds to education, irrespective of setting. We trace changes in legislation connected to these core tensions and what they imply for American education. America's founders viewed an educated public as vital for democracy. Congress consistently supported this value of quality education for all and funded the data collection needed to measure progress, find out what needs fixing, and whether proposed fixes work. We trace this process from establishing the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in 1867 to changes in legislation when NCES data highlighted shortfalls. As we describe, Congress responded repeatedly, starting in the 1900s, highlighting goals and providing funding. Because successful innovation requires humility, persistence, and future focus, Congress established the Institute for Education Science and, within it, the What Works Clearinghouse to provide a systematic record of efforts to improve. We describe Pathways‐to‐Success , a middle school teacher‐led program benefiting thousands of children across multiple states, developed, tested, and disseminated with Department of Education funding. Current federal legislation reduces the federal role in monitoring and testing education innovation, reduces funding to states, and incentivizes the growth of alternatives to public schools, including parochial, private, not‐for‐profit or for‐profit charter schools, and homeschooling. These alternative settings are not included in the scope of NCES data collection. Programs like Pathways‐to‐Success might work across these settings. However, less funding, reduced research, and monitoring will make it harder to find out.