Since its first days of operation, NORC has worked to improve the public's and government's understanding of issues related to education.

Some of the first rigorous scientific evaluations of students and their academic aspirations were conducted in the late 1950's and early 1960's.  Scholar James S. Coleman and former NORC director Peter H. Rossi launched the Study of High School Climates, which included interviews of 8,500 college-bound seniors, along with their parents and teachers, and a re-interview of the students during their first year in college.

This approach allowed NORC to develop several large-scale panel surveys for the U.S. Department of Education, the most well-known of which are High School and Beyond (HS&B), the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS-72), and the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). These studies provided irreplaceable information on the performance and experiences, hopes and plans of American young people and the hopes and plans their parents had for them. 

NELS:88 also examined the outcomes and experiences of students who drop out of high school and the study provided policy makers with data critical in designing interventions to reduce the dropout rate. NORC later helped evaluate the impact of some of those programs, including Head Start.

NORC also has a strong record conducting more narrowly focused education research, such as studies of particular school districts and programs, parochial education, the experiences of minority students, and students in specialized programs. In addition to these areas, NORC has contributed to the field of educational testing and ways to measure the quality of reading, mathematics and science instruction provided to secondary school students.

Today's education research builds on the strong foundation these innovative studies of the past provided.  To learn more about current education projects, click on the name of a study in the right hand column.