November 2019
On November 22, President Donald Trump announced his intent to appoint three members to the National Board for Education Sciences (NBES), which advises the director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) on the agency’s activities and approves priorities and peer review procedures for IES. The three appointees are Joe May, chancellor of the Dallas County Community College District; Chester Finn, distinguished senior fellow and president emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute; and David Francis, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished University Chair of Quantitative Methods and director of the Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics at the University of Houston.
Previously, May served as president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, president of the Colorado Community College System, and president of Pueblo Community College. He received his doctorate in education from Texas A&M–Commerce and his master of education and bachelor of science degrees from Stephen F. Austin State University.
Before serving at the Fordham Institute, Finn was the assistant secretary for research and improvement and counselor to the secretary at the U.S. Department of Education. In addition to his tenure as the Fordham Institute’s president from 1997 to 2014, he was the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, founding partner and senior scholar with the Edison Project, and professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University, among other roles. Finn received an undergraduate degree in U.S. history, a master's degree in social studies teaching, and a doctorate in education policy from Harvard University.
Francis is a fellow of Division 5 (Quantitative and Qualitative Methods) of the American Psychological Association and is currently chair of the Executive Board of the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology. He is also a member of the National Research Council’s (NRC) Board on Testing and Assessment, and served on the NRC’s Committee on Developmental Outcomes and Assessments for Young Children. He received a doctoral degree in clinical neuropsychology from the University of Houston in 1985. Francis was also previously appointed by President Obama to serve on NBES.
Current NBES members include Larry Hedges (Northwestern University), Jeannie Oakes (University of California, Los Angeles, and Learning Policy Institute), and David Chard (Boston University). Their terms end on November 28.