March 7, 2025 Story by: Editor
Peggy G. Carr serves as the Associate Commissioner for Assessment at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), part of the Institute of Education Sciences under the U.S. Department of Education.
She oversees large-scale national and international assessments, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), and various global education studies such as the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS).
Among these, NAEP, which has been federally mandated since 1969, is the most extensive and complex, serving as the only continuous national assessment of student academic progress.
Dr. Carr earned her B.S. in Psychology with a concentration in statistics from North Carolina Central University in 1976. She later pursued both her M.S. and Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at Howard University, completing them in 1978 and 1982, respectively.
Before joining NCES, Dr. Carr worked as Chief Statistician for the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, where she applied statistical and survey methodologies to issues related to discrimination, legislative compliance reviews, and complaints.
Prior to this role, she spent nearly ten years as a Research Methodologist at Howard University’s Statistical and Research Computer Laboratory, managing a team of statistical computing consultants who assisted graduate students with complex data analysis for dissertations and theses.
Additionally, she served as adjunct faculty for more than 15 years at Howard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she taught doctoral-level courses in statistical computing, quantitative research methods, and qualitative research methods. Throughout her career, Dr. Carr has been involved in numerous doctoral dissertation committees and has published research in areas such as child psychology, social psychology, experimental psychology, biostatistics, student achievement, and assessment methodology.
Dr. Carr initially joined NCES in 1993 as Director of Analysis and Reporting in the Assessment Division before being promoted to Associate Commissioner. Since 2001, she has been a Senior Executive Service (SES) official at the Department of Education. In recognition of her outstanding contributions to program management, she received the Meritorious Executive Rank Award in 2008 from President George Bush for her sustained excellence in leadership.
Source: NAGB
