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Abstract

Within each cabinet-level department of the federal government there are offices responsible for research, evaluation, and statistics. These offices are critical to producing evidence for social policy and encouraging its use. An evidence agenda within a department will flounder, or never even emerge, if its research office is weak. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES), established in 2002, is markedly different from the iterations of a federal education research offices that preceded it, and it has been successful in developing an evidence agenda in the Department of Education. Here, I use the IES example to address the challenge of improving the functioning of research offices in the federal government. I identify key ingredients in the success of IES that may be relevant to the reform of other federal research offices.

Keywords

education Congress research statistics evaluation U.S. Department of Education Office of Management and Budget evidence agenda

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The Institute of Education Sciences: A Model for Federal Research Offices

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