Overview

The Hawkins-Stafford Education Improvement Amendments of 1988 (Public Law 100-297) established the National Cooperative Education Statistics System to "produce and maintain, with the cooperation of the States, comparable and uniform education statistics." To assist in meeting this goal, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) created the National Forum on Education Statistics (the Forum).

The Forum strives to provide states, districts, and schools with helpful advice on the collection, maintenance, and use of elementary and secondary education data. To this end, Forum members—a diverse group of representatives from state and local education agencies (appointed by their state's superintendent), the federal government, and other organizations with an interest in education data—work collaboratively to address problems, develop resources, identify best practices, and consider new approaches to improving data collection and utility, all while remaining sensitive to privacy concerns and administrative burden.

Federal, state, and local education agencies have been using Forum products for over two decades to inform data system planning and development efforts. All Forum publications and resources are free of charge and can be accessed through this website, along with detailed information about the organization, upcoming events, and a large collection of other helpful resources related to education data.

About the Forum

The Forum is a voluntary, democratic, participative, and cooperative federal-state-local body with a mission to develop and recommend strategies for building education data systems that will support local, state, and national efforts to improve public and private education throughout the United States.