On April 7, the University of Oregon signed onto a letter urging congressional leaders to include additional Institute of Education Sciences (IES) funding for FY 2023 appropriations. The letter urges Congress to appropriate at least $815 million for IES in FY 2023 as an important step toward a goal of funding $1 billion for IES in the next few years. The request is based on the allocation recommended by the US Senate in its FY2022 mark-up. While IES saw about a 4% increase to its overall budget after completion of the Omnibus, the increase is well below initial recommendations by the US House and Senate.

The letter, signed by 38 members of the Friends of IES, including the UO and other research universities, asked Congress to include at least $815 million for IES in the FY 2023 Labor, Health & Human Services, Education, & Related Agencies appropriations bill. According to the letter, the requested funding “would bolster the research and statistical infrastructure needed to develop and scale up evidence-based interventions with the aim of improving academic outcomes, support important work to meet the social and emotional needs of students and the education workforce, and continue to respond to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in education.”

The IES has four centers—the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), National Center for Education Research (NCER), National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) and National Center for Education Evaluation (NCEE)—which work collaboratively to efficiently and comprehensively deliver rigorous research and high-quality data, statistics, and evaluations.

The NCSER budget has remained relatively flat since FY 2014 and still below its FY 2010 funding level. Due to limited funding, NCSER did not run competitions in FY 2022 for its annual special education research and training grants.

Also on April 7 and at the request of the U.S. Department of Education, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine provided a vision for NCES, the nation’s premier statistical agency for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating statistics at all levels of education. A summary of key findings and recommendations can be found here.

Nationally, UO ranks second among all universities in number of grants and contracts received from IES and first in the number of NCSER grants and contracts.