Top Officials Stepping Down From U.S. Ed. Dept.'s Research Arm

Former N.Y. academics led push to make field more 'evidence-based.'

Two of the federal government’s top education research officials are planning to leave their posts to take jobs at private Washington organizations where they will focus on school policy.

Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst, the director of the Institute of Education Sciences, the main research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, has agreed to take a position at the Brookings Institution, beginning next year.

And Mark S. Schneider, who served as commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, a research and data-crunching agency that is part of the IES, has said he is moving on to the American Institutes for Research, a job he...