The National Center for Education Research (NCER), in the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES), sponsored a 1-day IES Principal Investigators (PI) Meeting on September 7, 2011. The PI meeting included grantees from various research grant topic areas and provided opportunities for focused discussions on topics of general interest for investigators as they complete project activities. These topics included Challenges and Solutions to Efficacy/Scale Up Projects, Communicating Education Research, and Reading and Writing in the Content Areas of Math and Science. This meeting was followed by the Society of Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) Fall 2011 Conference titled: Building an Education Science: Improving Mathematics and Science Education for All Students.