NCME Signs Scientific Integrity Letter

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NCME Joins 19 Organizations Urging the Commerce Department to Restore Scientific Integrity Protections

The National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) has joined 19 scientific, statistical, and professional organizations in a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick urging the Department to reconsider recent revisions to its Scientific Integrity Policy (Department Administrative Order 216-23). The letter was delivered Monday, October 19, 2026.

The coalition asks the Department to restore two provisions removed in the revised policy:

  1. Language prohibiting political interference or inappropriate influence in the collection, analysis, and dissemination of federal data.
  2. Explicit whistleblower protections for individuals who report scientific integrity concerns.

The Department of Commerce houses two of the nation’s principal statistical agencies, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data they produce underpin research, public policy, and private investment across every sector of American life, including education. Census data inform school funding formulas, population estimates, and the sampling frames behind national education surveys. Educational measurement researchers and practitioners depend on these data being collected and reported according to established scientific standards, free from political consideration.

The signatory organizations are the AEA Committee on Government Relations, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, the American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics, the American Educational Research Association, the American Sociological Association, the American Statistical Association, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, the Association of Population Centers, the Association of Public Data Users, the Council of Professional Organizations on Federal Statistics, the Data Rescue Project, Decision Demographics, LLC, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, the National Association for Business Economics, the National Council on Measurement in Education, Nielsen, Obelisk Tech Systems Inc., the Population Association of America, the Population Reference Bureau, and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. More than 60 individual researchers, statisticians, and former federal officials also signed.

The full letter is available here.