[Federal Register Volume 89, Number 190 (Tuesday, October 1, 2024)]
[Notices]
[Pages 79902-79903]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2024-22490]


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DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

[Docket ID ED-2024-IES-0116]


Request for Information for Recommendations on Improving Data 
User Experiences Through a National Center for Education Statistics' 
2025 Data Users Conference

AGENCY: Institute of Education Sciences, Department of Education.

ACTION: Request for information.

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SUMMARY: The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the 
statistical center within the U.S. Department of Education's Institute 
of Education Sciences (IES), is soliciting public input on the 
framework for an inaugural Data Users Conference. The event will bring 
together a diverse set of NCES data users, including researchers, 
practitioners, parents/guardians, students, academic and commercial 
leaders in their fields, and policymakers. Their input will be used to 
refine NCES's approach to meeting the needs of its data users.

DATES: We must receive your comments by October 31, 2024.

ADDRESSES: Recommendations must be submitted via the Federal 
eRulemaking Portal at regulations.gov. However, if you require an 
accommodation or cannot otherwise submit your recommendations via 
regulations.gov, please contact the program contact person listed under 
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT. The Department will not accept 
recommendations by email or by fax. To ensure that the Department does 
not receive duplicate copies, please submit your recommendations only 
once. Additionally, please include the Docket ID at the top of your 
comments.
    Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to www.regulations.gov to submit 
your recommendations electronically. Information on using 
Regulations.gov, including instructions for accessing agency documents, 
submitting comments, and viewing the docket, is available on the site 
under the ``FAQ'' tab.
    Privacy Note: The Department's policy for comments received from 
members of the public is to make these submissions available for public 
viewing in their entirety on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at 
www.regulations.gov. Therefore, commenters should be careful to include 
in their recommendations only information that they wish to make 
publicly available. We encourage, but do not require, that each 
respondent include their name, title, institution or affiliation, and 
the name, title, mailing and email addresses, and telephone number of a 
contact person for the institution or affiliation, if any.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Eunice Greer, U.S. Department of 
Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW, Room PCP-4101, Washington, DC 20202. 
Telephone: (202) 320-7356. Email: <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#ebae9e8582888ec5ac998e8e99ab8e8fc58c849d"><span class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="0540706b6c66602b42776060774560612b626a73">[email protected]</span></a>.
    As stated above, recommendations must be submitted via the Federal 
eRulemaking Portal at regulations.gov. However, if you require an 
accommodation or cannot otherwise submit your recommendations via 
regulations.gov, please contact the program contact person listed 
above.
    If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability and 
wish to access telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 
    Background: NCES has a legal mandate to collect, collate, analyze, 
and report complete statistics on the condition of American education; 
conduct and publish reports; and review and report on education 
activities internationally. 20 U.S.C. 9541 et seq. Additionally, the 
Center is authorized to establish one or more national cooperative 
education statistics systems to produce and maintain, 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. 20 U.S.C. 
9547. Additional information about NCES is available here: https://nces.ed.gov/.
    NCES is convening data users in response to recommendations from 
the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) 
detailed in their 2022 report, A Vision and Roadmap for Education 
Statistics. This report was prepared at the request of NCES. NASEM 
recommends that NCES:

--Adapt to the changing world of education by increasing diversity and 
awareness of equity issues;
--Expand data-acquisition strategies to gain new insights;
--Prioritize topics, data content, and statistical information to 
increase relevance; and
--Expand engagement and dissemination for greater mission impact.

    The Data Users Conference will draw heavily on NCES data and invite 
presentations from external experts working with broader sources of 
data. Facilitated discussions will explore opportunities for expanding 
NCES data collection, application, and reporting. The Conference's 
centerpiece will be a three-day series of seminars that will focus on 
three themes:
    (1) Identifying and closing learning and achievement gaps;
    (2) Identifying and explaining ways that Pre-K, K-12, and 
postsecondary landscapes are changing; and
    (3) Expanding awareness and use of socio-spatial data, data for 
rural areas, and blended data to improve understanding of 
underrepresented groups.
    External experts will join NCES researchers in a series of 
presentations to address each theme in new and powerful ways. Within 
each theme,

[[Page 79903]]

participants will work together to articulate expanded strategies for 
gathering, analyzing, visualizing, and reporting data. In addition to 
providing a venue for data users to share novel uses of NCES data, NCES 
will also use the conference to share product and process updates. 
These may include updates to NCES data tools, reporting programs, and 
training opportunities.
    Please note that this RFI is only a request for recommendations and 
not a request for proposals (RFP), or a promise to issue an RFP, or a 
notice inviting applications (NIA). This RFI does not commit the 
Department to take any future administrative, contractual, regulatory, 
or other action. A Request for Proposals is forthcoming. The Department 
will not pay for any information or administrative costs that you may 
incur in responding to this RFI. Any supporting documents and 
information submitted in response to this RFI will not be returned.
    We will review each recommendation, and the information submitted 
in response to this RFI will be publicly available on the Federal 
eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov. Please note that IES will 
not directly respond to comments.
    Solicitation of Recommendations: We encourage the public, 
particularly those who are aware of key research questions and policy 
activity in one or more of the three theme areas, to address the 
following questions in their recommendations:
    (1) What are existing or emerging issues for data users that you 
consider critical for each of the three conference themes? Please 
provide citations and links to any noteworthy research publications and 
products that support these existing or emerging issues.
    (2) How can conference organizers best identify and convene a broad 
and diverse array of attendees? Recommended methods should promote 
inclusive approaches. Our goal is to convene organizations and/or 
individuals who are engaged in work related to one or more of the 
conference themes, including early career researchers, data users from 
smaller institutions, and non-traditional data users.
    (3) What NCES-affiliated products and processes are of greatest 
interest to data users? Are there any specific updates or modifications 
that would be helpful to data users?
    Accessible Format: By request to the program contact person listed 
under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT, individuals with disabilities 
can obtain this document in an accessible format. The Department will 
provide the requestor with an accessible format that may include Rich 
Text Format (RTF) or text format (txt), a thumb drive, an MP3 file, 
braille, large print, audiotape, or compact disc, or another accessible 
format.
    Electronic Access to This Document: The official version of this 
document is the document published in the Federal Register. You may 
access the official edition of the Federal Register and the Code of 
Federal Regulations at www.govinfo.gov. At this site you can view this 
document, as well as all other documents of this Department published 
in the Federal Register, in text or Portable Document Format (PDF). To 
use PDF, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available free at 
the site.
    You may also access documents of the Department published in the 
Federal Register by using the article search feature at 
www.federalregister.gov. Specifically, through the advanced search 
feature at this site, you can limit your search to documents published 
by the Department.

Matthew Soldner,
Acting Director, Institute of Education Sciences.
[FR Doc. 2024-22490 Filed 9-30-24; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4000-01-P


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