The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is the independent, non-partisan statistics, research, and evaluation arm of the U.S. Department of Education. IES' stated mission is to provide scientific evidence on which to ground education practice and policy and to share this information in formats that are useful and accessible to educators, parents, policymakers, researchers, and the public.[1] It was created as part of the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002.
The first director of IES was Grover Whitehurst, who was appointed in November 2002 and served for six years. As of March 2024, Matthew Soldner is the acting Director of IES.[2]