Work with the Field

Beyond our blog and newsletters, Agora shares longer-form work with the field — responses to federal Requests for Information, public comments, capability materials, and the occasional thought piece on the future of education research and data. They live here.

No One to Hand It To: NCES Expertise One Year After the RIF · September 2026 · First Look

First findings from Agora’s census survey of the 95 individuals who separated from NCES during the reductions beginning in late 2024. Of 91 reached individually, 72 responded, a rate of 79 percent. More than two-thirds held expertise that was unique or nearly unique within the agency. Only about a quarter still work primarily in education data, and about half of those working use few or none of their federal statistical skills. More than four in ten would return to a rebuilt NCES, a figure that declines as people settle into other work. Reports closed-ended findings; a full report with coded open-ended responses follows. By Carolyn Grim, Ph.D.

Remaking NCES — Agora’s Feedback to the American Statistical Association · September 2026 · Comment

Agora’s response to the American Statistical Association’s A Vision and Strategy for Remaking the National Center for Education Statistics (August 2026), submitted through ASA’s feedback process as the project moves into a roadmap phase and published here in full. The comment endorses the report’s three-responsibilities framing and identifies three gaps for the roadmap: no policy on break in series, despite proposals that would create discontinuities in NAEP and elsewhere; an unstated staffing implication, since curation demands more subject-matter expertise than the model it replaces; and a cost profile that is front-loaded. Draws on Agora’s census survey of former NCES staff. Authored by Carolyn Grim, Ph.D., with review by Daniel Kasprzyk, Jodi Jacobson Chernoff, and Melanie Ali. 

Regional Educational Laboratory Program, 2027-2031: Agora’s RFI Response, January 2026

Agora’s response to IES’s Request for Information on the design of the next round of REL contracts. It lays out concrete ways to make REL work faster, more responsive, and more useful to states and districts: flexible “umbrella” projects that adapt as state needs change, reserved capacity for one-to-four-week rapid-response studies, concurrent rather than sequential peer review, practitioner-focused products instead of 50-page reports, and heavier reuse of existing federal and state data — NCES collections, CEDS, and statewide longitudinal data systems — to cut cost and burden.

Redesigning the Institute of Education Sciences — Agora’s Public Comment · 2025 · Public Comment

Agora’s comment on the federal Request for Information on redesigning IES (docket ED-2025-IES-0844). Drawing on the team’s direct experience running these programs, it argues that strengthening the Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) grant program and Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) technical assistance — and integrating them into agency-wide data governance — would advance all four of IES’s priorities: reducing data-collection burden, making grantmaking more practitioner-relevant, improving evidence dissemination, and delivering more responsive technical assistance to states. All 56 eligible states and territories have used these programs to build longitudinal data systems linking early-childhood through workforce data. Authored by Nancy Sharkey, Ed.D. (former NCES SLDS Program Officer) and Carolyn Grim, Ph.D. 

Agora Capabilities Brochure

A short, shareable PDF introducing who we are and what we do — the team’s roots in federal education statistics, our applied-research and technical-assistance services, and how to partner with us.

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