The Acting NCES Commissioner
Peggy G. Carr, Ph.D. Acting Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics |
Peggy G. Carr is the Acting Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics in the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. As Acting Commissioner, Dr. Carr oversees NCES's fulfillment of its Congressional mandate to "...collect, collate, analyze, and report complete statistics on the condition of American education; conduct and publish reports; and review and report on education activities internationally."
During her appointment as Acting Commissioner, Dr. Carr continues to serve as the Associate Commissioner of Assessment for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a role she has held for 16 years. She is responsible for the Department's national and international large-scale assessments. She oversees the administration of:
as well as the International Activities Programs, which include:
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest and most complex of the Department's large-scale assessments and has been congressionally mandated since 1969. It is America's only ongoing monitor of students' academic progress of its kind.
Dr. Carr first joined NCES in 1993 as Director of Analysis and Reporting in the Assessment Division. She has been a Senior Executive Service (SES) official for the Department of Education since 2001, and was awarded the Meritorious Executive Rank Award for sustained superior accomplishments in management of programs in 2008 by President George Bush.
Before coming to NCES, Dr. Carr served as the Chief Statistician for Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education where she engaged in the application of statistics and survey methods to the field of discrimination, conducted legislative compliance reviews, and responded to complaints.
Before joining the Department of Education, Dr. Carr served for nearly a decade in Howard University's Statistical and Research Computer Laboratory as the Research Methodologist. There, she managed a team of statistical computing consultants who provided guidance in the use and application of statistical analyses to all of the University's schools and colleges. In addition, Dr. Carr spent more than 15 years as adjunct faculty in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Howard University where she taught doctoral level courses in statistical computing, quantitative and qualitative research methods. She has served on numerous doctoral dissertation committees and has published in the areas of child psychology, social psychology, experimental psychology, bio-statistics, student achievement, and assessment methodology.
Dr. Carr received her B.S. in Psychology with a concentration in statistics in 1976 from North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina. She earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Howard University in 1978 and 1982, respectively.