UC Irvine

The Workshop to Examine Current and Potential Uses of NCES Longitudinal Surveys by the Education Research Community was held on November 5–6, 2013, in Washington, DC, with the aim of providing the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) with input on the changing needs of the education research community and to offer ideas on ways NCES longitudinal surveys could be organized to plan into the future—particularly in light of a changing U.S. student population due to growing and diverse flows of immigrants. The following provides an overview of the transformation of the United States into a new nation of immigrants over the past several decades, and of a rapidly growing second generation of children of immigrants; discusses immigration and generational contexts most relevant to situating the educational experience of a changing student population; takes note of a similar previous effort to incorporate immigration-relevant data into federal surveys and official statistics; and proposes a “common core” of questions in NCES longitudinal surveys (only some of which are already being used in some surveys, but not consistently).