The National Center for Education Statistics, the federal statistical agency for education, is asking the public how it should redesign its whole portfolio of studies. Its request for information, published in the Federal Register on October 29, 2026, takes comments through December 3, 2026, and covers both its administrative data collections and its sample surveys, cross-sectional and longitudinal.

For anyone who uses federal education data to measure programs, enrollment, completions or outcomes, this is the open window to say which collections matter and why.

What NCES is asking

NCES, part of the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education, says it wants a framework to guide the redevelopment of its work. The notice frames the problem in two parts. First, its legal mandate spans every level of education, domestic and international, for a wide range of audiences, so it has to choose what to collect and for whom. Second, it says it has never adopted a formal process of strategic foresight to anticipate how conditions and data needs will change, and that this risks producing data that no longer fits the questions of the day.

The request lists seven questions:

  • What data states, districts, educators and families most need now to improve outcomes for learners.
  • How to prepare collections for future needs as educational conditions change.
  • Which collection methods best fit current and evolving needs.
  • How collection and dissemination could be optimized for future applications of what the notice calls super intelligence, a term it says was formerly artificial intelligence.
  • Which dissemination methods best serve NCES's audiences.
  • Which collection and dissemination methods are most efficient for the resources they take.
  • Which federal, state, local and industry partnerships would make the most of the data.

Two tradeoffs it names

The notice also asks about two specific tensions. One is respondent burden: NCES says survey response rates are declining and asks how it should prioritize and streamline its collections while keeping them useful. The other is timeliness. NCES has historically added value to its files by deriving analytic variables across sources, imputing missing data and writing extensive documentation for non-technical users, and it says that work competes with getting data out quickly. It asks how to resolve that as a statistical agency.

Both questions bear directly on postsecondary users. NCES runs the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, which colleges report to every year and which supplies the enrollment, completion and graduation figures that program reviews, accreditation self-studies and outside researchers routinely cite. A decision to trade derived variables or documentation for speed, or to cut a sample survey to reduce burden, would change what those users can measure.

What it is not

The notice says it is a request for information only. It is not a request for proposals, does not commit the department to any contract and will not lead to a direct response to individual comments. It does not itself propose ending or changing any specific collection.

How to comment

  • Deadline: December 3, 2026.
  • Where: only through regulations.gov, under docket ED-2026-IES-3235. The department will not accept comments by email or fax. The docket number was missing from the original notice and was added in a correction published November 2.
  • Public record: comments are posted publicly in full, so include only what you are willing to have published.
  • Accommodations: anyone who cannot use regulations.gov can contact Matthew Soldner, the acting NCES commissioner, who signed the notice.

A comment is most useful when it names the collection, the variable and the decision it informs: for example, which IPEDS component a program review relies on, how often it is pulled and what would break if it were delayed or dropped. NCES asks commenters, though it does not require it, to identify themselves and their institution.

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