20 USC 9543 - Duties

§ 9541. Establishment
§ 9542. Commissioner for Education Statistics
§ 9543. Duties
§ 9544. Performance of duties
§ 9545. Reports
§ 9546. Dissemination
§ 9547. Cooperative education statistics systems
§ 9548. State defined

§ 9541. Establishment

(a) Establishment

(b) MissionThe mission of the Statistics Center shall be—

(1) to collect and analyze education information and statistics in a manner that meets the highest methodological standards;

(2) to report education information and statistics in a timely manner; and

(3) to collect, analyze, and report education information and statistics in a manner that—

(A) is objective, secular, neutral, and nonideological and is free of partisan political influence and racial, cultural, gender, or regional bias; and

(B) is relevant and useful to practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and the public.

(Pub. L. 107–279, title I, § 151, Nov. 5, 2002, 116 Stat. 1957.)

§ 9542. Commissioner for Education Statistics

The Statistics Center shall be headed by a Commissioner for Education Statistics (in this part referred to as the “Statistics Commissioner”) who shall be highly qualified and have substantial knowledge of statistical methodologies and activities undertaken by the Statistics Center.

(Pub. L. 107–279, title I, § 152, Nov. 5, 2002, 116 Stat. 1958.)

§ 9543. Duties

(a) General dutiesThe Statistics Center shall collect, report, analyze, and disseminate statistical data related to education in the United States and in other nations, including—

(1) collecting, acquiring, compiling (where appropriate, on a State-by-State basis), and disseminating full and complete statistics (disaggregated by the population characteristics described in paragraph (3)) on the condition and progress of education, at the preschool, elementary, secondary, postsecondary, and adult levels in the United States, including data on—

(A) State and local education reform activities;

(B) State and local early childhood school readiness activities;

(C) student achievement in, at a minimum, the core academic areas of reading, mathematics, and science at all levels of education;

(D) secondary school completions, dropouts, and adult literacy and reading skills;

(E) access to, and opportunity for, postsecondary education, including data on financial aid to postsecondary students;

(F) teaching, including—

(i) data on in-service professional development, including a comparison of courses taken in the core academic areas of reading, mathematics, and science with courses in noncore academic areas, including technology courses; and

(ii) the percentage of teachers who meet the applicable State certification and licensure requirements, including any requirements for certification obtained through alternative routes to certification, or, with regard to special education teachers, the qualifications described in section 1412(a)(14)(C) of this title.1

1 So in original. The period probably should not appear.

in each State and, where feasible, in each local educational agency and school;

(G) instruction, the conditions of the education workplace, and the supply of, and demand for, teachers;

(H) the incidence, frequency, seriousness, and nature of violence affecting students, school personnel, and other individuals participating in school activities, as well as other indices of school safety, including information regarding—

(i) the relationship between victims and perpetrators;

(ii) demographic characteristics of the victims and perpetrators; and

(iii) the type of weapons used in incidents, as classified in the Uniform Crime Reports of the Federal Bureau of Investigation;

(I) the financing and management of education, including data on revenues and expenditures;

(J) the social and economic status of children, including their academic achievement;

(K) the existence and use of educational technology and access to the Internet by students and teachers in elementary schools and secondary schools;

(L) access to, and opportunity for, early childhood education;

(M) the availability of, and access to, before-school and after-school programs (including such programs during school recesses);

(N) student participation in and completion of secondary and postsecondary vocational and technical education programs by specific program area; and

(O) the existence and use of school libraries;

(2) conducting and publishing reports on the meaning and significance of the statistics described in paragraph (1);

(3) collecting, analyzing, cross-tabulating, and reporting, to the extent feasible, information by gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, limited English proficiency, mobility, disability, urban, rural, suburban districts, and other population characteristics, when such disaggregated information will facilitate educational and policy decisionmaking;

(4) assisting public and private educational agencies, organizations, and institutions in improving and automating statistical and data collection activities, which may include assisting State educational agencies and local educational agencies with the disaggregation of data and with the development of longitudinal student data systems;

(5) determining voluntary standards and guidelines to assist State educational agencies in developing statewide longitudinal data systems that link individual student data consistent with the requirements of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 6301 et seq.), promote linkages across States, and protect student privacy consistent with section 9573 of this title, to improve student academic achievement and close achievement gaps;

(6) acquiring and disseminating data on educational activities and student achievement (such as the Third International Math and Science Study) in the United States compared with foreign nations;

(7) conducting longitudinal and special data collections necessary to report on the condition and progress of education;

(8) assisting the Director in the preparation of a biennial report, as described in section 9519 of this title; and

(9) determining, in consultation with the National Research Council of the National Academies, methodology by which States may accurately measure graduation rates (defined as the percentage of students who graduate from secondary school with a regular diploma in the standard number of years), school completion rates, and dropout rates.

(b) Training program

(Pub. L. 107–279, title I, § 153, Nov. 5, 2002, 116 Stat. 1958; Pub. L. 114–95, title IX, § 9214(b), Dec. 10, 2015, 129 Stat. 2161.)

§ 9544. Performance of duties

(a) Grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements

(b) Gathering information

(1) Sampling

(2) Source of information

The Statistics Commissioner may, as appropriate, use information collected—

(A) from States, local educational agencies, public and private schools, preschools, institutions of higher education, vocational and adult education programs, libraries, administrators, teachers, students, the general public, and other individuals, organizations, agencies, and institutions (including information collected by States and local educational agencies for their own use); and

(B) by other offices within the Institute and by other Federal departments, agencies, and instrumentalities.

(3) Collection

The Statistics Commissioner may—

(A) enter into interagency agreements for the collection of statistics;

(B) arrange with any agency, organization, or institution for the collection of statistics; and

(C) assign employees of the Statistics Center to any such agency, organization, or institution to assist in such collection.

(4) Technical assistance and coordination

In order to maximize the effectiveness of Department efforts to serve the educational needs of children and youth, the Statistics Commissioner shall—

(A) provide technical assistance to the Department offices that gather data for statistical purposes; and

(B) coordinate with other Department offices in the collection of data.

(Pub. L. 107–279, title I, § 154, Nov. 5, 2002, 116 Stat. 1960.)

§ 9545. Reports

(a) Procedures for issuance of reports

(b) Report on condition and progress of education

(Pub. L. 107–279, title I, § 155, Nov. 5, 2002, 116 Stat. 1960.)

§ 9546. Dissemination

(a) General requests

(1) In general

(2) Compilations

(b) Congressional requests

(d) Fees

(1) In general

(2) Funds received

(e) Access

(1) Other agencies

(2) Interested parties

(Pub. L. 107–279, title I, § 156, Nov. 5, 2002, 116 Stat. 1961.)

§ 9547. Cooperative education statistics systems

The Statistics Center may establish 1 or more national cooperative education statistics systems for the purpose of producing and maintaining, with the cooperation of the States, comparable and uniform information and data on early childhood education, elementary and secondary education, postsecondary education, adult education, and libraries, that are useful for policymaking at the Federal, State, and local levels.

(Pub. L. 107–279, title I, § 157, Nov. 5, 2002, 116 Stat. 1962.)

§ 9548. State defined

In this part, the term “State” means each of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

(Pub. L. 107–279, title I, § 158, Nov. 5, 2002, 116 Stat. 1962.)