On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Mark Schneider, who recently finished up his six-year tenure as Director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Nat and Mark discuss the past, present, and future of IES; what’s wrong with the What Works Clearinghouse; student privacy protections; NAEP; the state of special education research; why education research isn’t replicated; scalability; whether most education research is useful, usable, and used; why we need a DARPA for education; whether education research should be profitable; the incentive structures in education research; and more.

Mark Schneider is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at SUNY Stony Brook. He was previously Director of the Institute of Education Sciences, a visiting scholar at AEI, a vice president and Institute Fellow at the American Institutes for Research, and Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.