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The Commissioner's Statement

Mark Schneider

Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics

Mark Schneider was confirmed by the Senate as the Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) on 24 October 2005 for the remainder of a term expiring June 20, 2009. NCES is one of the four centers of the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. He is on leave from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he is Distinguished Professor of political science. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina in 1974. He has written widely in the areas of urban politics and public policy. His articles have appeared in all the major political science, sociology, and policy journals. His 1989 book The Competitive City won special recognition by the American Political Science Association’s Urban Politics Section for its theoretical contribution to the study of urban politics. His book, Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice and the Quality of American Schools (Princeton U. Press, 2000, with Paul Teske and Melissa Marschall) won the Aaron Wildavsky best book prize from the Policy Studies Organization. In 2007, Princeton published his latest book: Charter Schools: Hope or Hype? coauthored with Jack Buckley. Schneider has also done extensive research connecting school facilities to educational outcomes.

Schneider has been active in his professional organizations, having served as the Vice President of the American Political Science Association 2000-2001; President, American Political Science Association Public Policy Section, 2000-2001; Program Chair, Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meetings, 2001; and on the executives council of the Midwest Political Science Association, the APSA Urban Section, and the APSA Public Policy Section. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, New York City, September 1997-July 1998 and at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, August 1990-August 1991. Earlier he held a Fulbright-Hays Senior Fellowship, 1980-1981, at Osmania University, Hyderabad, India.

Commissioner's Remarks for 2008

May 30 2008
Benefits and Limitations of States Benchmarking to International Standards - Over the past two decades, large-scale international assessments of student performance have become well-established programs in which the United States and many other countries around the world participate. These international assessments allow us to "benchmark" the knowledge and skills of our students against students in other countries in key subjects such as mathematics and science. The United States conducts these assessments at the national level; only occasionally have these tests been conducted at the state level.

April 29 2008
An Exploratory Analysis of the Content and Availability of State Administrative Data on Teacher Compensation - This report identifies state education agencies (SEAs) that maintain records on pay for public school teachers, the comparability of these records, and whether the data might be available to the research community. The report finds that many states maintain teacher-level records with earnings and other teacher characteristics, and are willing to share these data with researchers. It is feasible to use teacher employment and compensation data collected by SEAs to conduct large multistate comparative studies of teacher pay. These studies would not only permit overall comparisons of pay, but also comparisons of teacher pay at various points along typical career trajectories, with breakdowns by teacher demographics and state or district characteristics.

April 3 2008
Commissioner's Remarks - The Nation's Report Card: Writing 2007 - Today I am releasing the results of the 2007 writing assessment from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. This assessment was given January through March 2007 to 8th- and 12th-grade students across the country.