Part One: “From Paper to Punch Cards: How NCES Revolutionized Education Data (1867-1990s)”
When Gerald “Jerry” Malitz began his career at the National Center for Education Statistics in 1974 as a GS-5 graduate student, data collection meant mailing paper forms to schools across America and manually recording responses on punch cards. By the time he concluded his tenure as Chief Information Technology Officer at the Institute of Education Sciences in 2007, researchers worldwide could access sophisticated online tools like College Navigator with the click of a mouse. Jerry’s 33-year journey at NCES mirrors the remarkable technological transformation of America’s premier education statistics agency—a transformation that now faces an uncertain future.
As we at Agora Education Services work to preserve and enhance access to critical education data following the recent federal workforce reductions, we find ourselves uniquely positioned to continue this legacy of innovation. Jerry Malitz, now an Associate with Agora, recently shared his institutional knowledge of how NCES evolved from a paper-based operation into a digital pioneer. His insights illuminate both the remarkable progress achieved and the opportunities that lie ahead.
The Foundation Years: Paper, Mail, and Manual Processing
The story of NCES data dissemination begins in 1867, when the federal government first began systematically collecting education statistics. For over a century, this process remained fundamentally unchanged: paper forms were mailed to schools, completed by hand, and returned by mail to Washington, D.C. There, NCES staff painstakingly compiled and tabulated the information by hand, creating summary tables and reports through purely manual processes.
This labor-intensive process defined data collection through the mid-20th century. What we now know as the Common Core of Data (CCD) was originally called LCIS, while the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) evolved from its predecessor, HEGIS. Each dataset required months of manual processing before basic statistics could be generated and shared with Congress, researchers, and the public through printed reports.
“Everything was paper based,” Jerry recalls of his early years at NCES. “We would send forms out by mail, get them back by mail, and then record everything in-house on punch cards. It was incredibly time-consuming, but it was the only way we knew how to do comprehensive data collection at scale.”
The Magnetic Revolution: 1980s Technology Transformation
The 1980s marked the first major technological leap in NCES data management. Punch cards gave way to large magnetic tapes for primary data storage, dramatically increasing capacity and reliability. While tapes handled the bulk storage needs, floppy disks emerged as the preferred medium for distributing smaller data extracts to individual researchers and analysts.
This period also saw NCES become part of the newly formed Department of Education in 1980, after spending decades within the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Jerry participated in inter-agency task forces during this transition, working to standardize technology and security protocols across different federal agencies—early efforts that would prove crucial as digital systems became more sophisticated.
By the late 1980s, hard drives began supplementing magnetic tape storage, setting the stage for the server-based systems that would dominate the 1990s. Even as primary storage evolved, however, magnetic tapes remained essential for backup procedures. Daily backups were routinely sent to Iron Mountain for secure off-site storage—a practice that continued well into the digital era.
The CD-ROM Era: Democratizing Data Access
The early 1990s witnessed another revolutionary shift with the introduction of CD-ROM technology. For the first time, NCES could distribute large datasets directly to users with built-in analysis tools, dramatically expanding access to education data beyond the small community of specialists with mainframe access.
“CDs were game-changing,” Jerry explains. “We could put entire datasets on a disk along with software tools that let researchers analyze the data themselves. It opened up NCES data to a much broader audience.”
But the CD-ROM revolution was just the beginning. In our next post, we’ll explore how NCES made the leap to the internet age—creating tools like College Navigator that transformed how millions of Americans search for colleges and pioneering the NCES Kids Zone that brought statistical literacy to elementary classrooms nationwide. We’ll also examine how this legacy of innovation faces new challenges today, and what it means for the future of education data access.
Coming next week: “From Dial-Up to Data Democracy: How NCES Went Digital (And What Happens Next)”
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