From its earliest studies on the impact of the GI Bill and public views concerning the federal role in education in the 1940s and 1950s, to the pioneering use of cognitive testing tools with pre-school children, to recent reports on the production and career trajectories of Ph.D. scientists and engineers in 2002, NORC has been a leading contributor to research in the education and child development fields. Major studies have focused on such diverse populations as Head Start enrollees and their parents; elementary and secondary school students, teachers, and administrators; postsecondary students and faculty in all sectors; and developers of innovative education and training programs.

Projects range from the highly technical development of testing programs to assess student mastery; to completion of decade-long longitudinal studies of education and labor force activity of middle and high school students; to assisting state and local governments in determining what works to promote educational improvement; to helping federal agencies collect and distribute high quality data resources that support continuing analyses by researchers, policy makers, and educators.