The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) provides a highly important resource for the nation through its longitudinal surveys of student growth and achievement. These surveys have yielded evidence to support a wide range of scientific investigations of learning and development for more than 40 years. Over this time, however, significant changes have occurred in the demography of the U.S. student population, in the technology available for research, and in the data available beyond the national surveys.

With funding from the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Academy of Education and NCES convened a workshop in November 2013 to explore ideas regarding how NCES surveys could better align with changing needs of education researchers and maximize the potential of evolving research methodologies. The workshop resulted in a rich collection of papers (linked below) that examine opportunities to improve NCES longitudinal surveys from a variety of research perspectives.