Mark Schneider
About
Before joining IES, Mark Schneider was a vice president and an Institute Fellow at American Institutes for Research (AIR) and President of College Measures. Prior to joining AIR, Dr. Schneider served as Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics from 2005–2008. In 2013, the Chronicle of Higher Education selected him as one of the 10 people who had the most impact on higher education policy that year.
He is the author of numerous articles and books on education policy. His most recent book, The University Next Door, edited with KC Deane, was published in 2014 by Teachers College, Columbia University. Other books include Getting to Graduation, edited with Andrew Kelly, published in 2012 by Johns Hopkins University Press and Higher Education Accountability, edited with Kevin Carey, published by Palgrave in 2010; Charter Schools: Hope or Hype? written with Jack Buckley, was published by Princeton University Press in 2007. Schneider's 2000 book, Choosing Schools, also published by Princeton University Press, won the Policy Study Organization's Aaron Wildavsky Best Book Award.
Dr. Schneider was a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of political science at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.
Associate IES Content
Program Information
2019 Program Information includes Agenda, Speakers and Posters
Program Information
Welcome to the 2022 IES Principal Investigators Meeting! Our theme this year is Advancing Equity and Inclusion in the Education Sciences. Over the past 20 years, IES has supported rigorous and relevant research to help identify, measure, and address disparities in education access and outcomes. However, disparities persist and have been further exacerbated by COVID-19, underscoring the importance of advancing equity and inclusion in the education sciences.
Program Information
Welcome to the 2020 Annual Principal Investigators Meeting! Our theme this year, Closing the Gaps for All Learners, underscores IES’s objective to support research that improves equity in access to education and education outcomes.
Program Information
2023 Program Information includes Agenda, Keynote Speakers and Session Materials
Minutes of Meeting: May 21-22, 2008
NBES meeting minutes on May 21-22, 2008
Minutes of Meeting: May 8-9, 2006
NBES meeting minutes on May 8-9, 2006
Minutes of Meeting: January 24, 2008
NBES meeting minutes on January 24, 2008
Minutes of Meeting: December 4-5, 2023
NBES meeting minutes on December 4-5, 2023
Minutes of Meeting: January 23-24, 2007
NBES meeting minutes on January 23-24, 2007
Minutes of Meeting: September 11, 2023
NBES meeting minutes on September 11, 2023
Minutes of Meeting: January 23-24, 2006
NBES meeting minutes on January 23, 2006.
Minutes of Meeting: September 20-21, 2006
NBES meeting minutes on September 20-21, 2006
Minutes of Meeting: September 9-10, 2008
NBES meeting minutes on September 9-10, 2008
Minutes of Meeting: September 6-7, 2005
NBES meeting minutes on September 6-7, 2005
Minutes of Meeting: May 23-24, 2007
NBES meeting minutes on May 23-24, 2007
Blog
Building an Inclusive R&D Ecosystem
The following blog is adapted from a talk I gave at the American Educational Research Association's 2024 conference in Philadelphia. There is no shortage of writing on "inclusive R&D." The work spans decades, disciplines, and geography. I unearthed one model, offered by Digital Promise, that I particularly appreciated. My crude distillation of their work is that inclusive R&D should: As I started thinking through the breadth and depth of IES-sponsored R&D, much of which I believe is truly ex...
Date published:
Apr 17, 2024
Blog
Five Years Closer to CTE Success + A Farewell
Before I came to Washington, DC in 2003, I had spent a good part of my career helping students from middle school through graduate programs learn concrete skills that would help them find good jobs and launch strong careers. I had no idea that these activities would eventually all be labeled career and technical education (CTE). When I became commissioner of NCES in 2004, I discovered that like Monsieur Jourdain in Moliere's The Bourgeois Gentleman, I had been speaking prose for all those ye...
Date published:
Mar 26, 2024
Blog
Statistically Significant Doesn't Mean Meaningful
In the first section of this post, I share growing concerns about the potential for misinterpreting results when we focus solely on statistical significance. In the second section, Brian Gill (bgill@mathematica-mpr.com) joins me to discuss how Bayesian approaches are a promising solution to this challenge. Starting with our very first statistics course, most of us were taught that random variation can lead us to misidentify a difference between groups or a change over time when there is no m...
Date published:
Feb 13, 2024
Blog
Help Us Grow Seedlings
Many of you, I'm sure, have been following the ongoing efforts of IES and its supporters to establish NCADE (aka ARPA-ED). Congress needs to create NCADE, and we continue to see slow but steady progress there. In the meantime, IES is carving out a set of innovative, risk-informed, high-reward activities that fit within our existing legislative authority (and budget), pending the more extensive changes that NCADE will enable. Among the ARPA-like activities moving forward is our From Seedlings...
Date published:
Jan 23, 2024
Blog
The Path Forward for NCADE, Part I
With less than six months to the end of my term as director of IES, I have been thinking about what to focus on during my remaining time in office. I believe that setting out guidelines to ensure the success of NCADE is where I can best contribute. For over two decades, IES has tried to tackle a wide range of R&D using just a limited set of tools and approaches. By adopting and adapting tools that are already deployed at other ARPAs around government, IES via NCADE will be able to more syste...
Date published:
Nov 28, 2023
Blog
Math Autoscoring is Finally Here—Let's Tap Its Potential for Improving Student Performance
AI is everywhere—from the websites you search to the stores where you shop to the schools where you send your kids. Companies, governments, and nonprofits alike are spending fortunes on making AI algorithms and interfaces better. Much of this money is pursuing broad generative AI that can answer lots of questions across lots of subjects. But there is a complement to pursuing AI as an all-purpose machine: building focused AI tools designed to achieve specific objectives. One such target is...
Date published:
Oct 16, 2023
Blog
IES and Accelerating Learning Recovery
America's students are struggling. That's according to the recent release of NAEP's long-term trend report on the math and reading scores of 13-year-old students in the United States, which adds the finishing touches to NAEP's current cycle of reports showing just how harmful the COVID-19 pandemic was to student achievement. As reported widely, scores fell dramatically across the entire population of 13-year-olds and across just about every subgroup of students NAEP reports on. The depth of ...
Date published:
Jul 05, 2023
Blog
What's on tap at IES for the next year?
Earlier this month, I celebrated my fifth anniversary as director of IES, leaving just one year on my term of office. I could look backward to highlight some of what I think are the biggest accomplishments of those years, but I am not much for retrospection. Rather, I am thinking about priorities for the remaining year. There are many versions of the wisdom that one should not expect their priorities to survive an encounter with reality (my current favorite is Mike Tyson's: "Everyone has a p...
Date published:
Apr 19, 2023
Blog
My Thanks to IES Staff on Our 20th Anniversary
When I took this position five years ago, I had a grand vision of modernizing IES. Those of you who have read my blogs know many of my ambitions—investing in artificial intelligence, articulating the SEER principles, and, most recently, NCADE, are all things I have set out to achieve during my tenure. But in truth, I am but a small part of the story. As the great Phil Jackson once said (my nod to March Madness—and probably exhausting pretty much everything I know about sports): "The stre...
Date published:
Mar 30, 2023
Blog
Big Dreams for Big Data: A Look Ahead
Over the past 20 years, IES has built a strong foundation for the education sciences. But time does not stand still, and much of the way we have worked needs a rethink. The question we are faced with is how best to build a more modern, quicker, and less expensive infrastructure for education research and development atop the existing foundation. This is particularly so now that Congress has put IES on a path toward what we hope will be ARPA-ED. There are two avenues into the future that we a...
Date published:
Mar 01, 2023
Blog
Innovation in the Education Sciences (the new IES)
In the heart of every federal agency lies a dream of becoming the next DARPA—the folks that brought us advances like GPS and the internet. I want to bring you up to speed on our most recent efforts to create ARPA-ED and open a discussion with our stakeholders about where we will go from here as we pursue its creation. While ARPA-ED won't create a new internet, there are many questions a DARPA-like unit might tackle: How will we identify the new literacy skills Americans need and develop th...
Date published:
Feb 02, 2023
Blog
Do we need humans anymore?
I begin with a confession. In 2008, several months after I left my job as commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, I was invited to an international conference to discuss NAEP. Since NAEP is a big multifaceted operation, I was at a loss about how to organize my comments. My solution was to turn to a (then) innovative state-of-the-art knowledge management tool—Wikipedia, which had an excellent discussion of NAEP's history, scope, and topics covered. I didn't use the Wik...
Date published:
Jan 04, 2023
Blog
Groundhog Day? Different test. Same story.
With all the attention garnered by the release of the steep declines in NAEP scores, another set of indicators of the condition of American education went far less remarked upon. I refer to the data contained in the ACT national profile report of the graduating class of 2022 released on October 12, 2022. The ACT focuses on students at the end of their high school career and uses test scores as an indicator of both academic achievement and college readiness. This, of course, provides insights...
Date published:
Nov 16, 2022
Blog
The U.S. Department of Education's Independent and Nonpartisan Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Celebrates 20th Anniversary
IES Looks to Future With a Campaign Focused on “Progress. Purpose. Performance.” WASHINGTON (November 3, 2022)—Today marks 20 years for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the U.S. Department of Education's independent and nonpartisan statistics, research, and evaluation arm. Since 2002, the organization has transformed education science through innovative products and has set the standard for collecting, investigating, and evaluating evidence. Over the last 20 years, IES has ...
Date published:
Nov 03, 2022
Blog
NAEP Release: What to Know, What to Admit We Don't Know
NAEP Release: What to Know, What to Admit We Don't Know On Monday, October 24, 2022, the National Center for Education Statistics released the latest NAEP results, covering reading and math in grades 4 and 8. As is the norm with "Main NAEP" results, lots of data were included in the release and even more data are available via the NAEP Data Explorer. I want to highlight just a few of the findings that strike me as particularly important for understanding where the nation stands academically ...
Date published:
Nov 02, 2022
Blog
Addressing the COVID Learning Crisis
The recent release of the 2022 NAEP Long Term Trends (LTT) shows that two decades of educational progress have been lost in two years and reinforces the urgent need to put to use all the tools in the education science toolbox to accelerate learning and address gaps in student achievement exacerbated by COVID-19. The situation is most likely worse than LTT tells us. Long Term Trends focus on reading and mathematics, and so cannot tell us about learning losses in science, history, civics, the ...
Date published:
Sep 13, 2022
Blog
Downward Trends: Pre- and Post-pandemic NAEP Results
Mounting evidence shows just how much damage the COVID-19 pandemic and related school closures wreaked on our nation's students. The recently released results for NAEP's Long Term Trend (LTT) assessment for 9-year-old students adds depth to an already dismal picture. LTT has been administered to 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students for decades. Focused on core skills, LTT in reading was first administered in 1971 and math in 1973, giving us a very long trend line. But for now, I am interested i...
Date published:
Sep 01, 2022
Blog
Modernizing IES Using Large Data Libraries
IES is in its 20th anniversary year. One of our themes throughout this year has been identifying what is needed to build a modern education sciences infrastructure. This blog focuses on one of those building blocks: identifying, creating, and supporting large datasets to facilitate research at scale. Large data sets have an obvious benefit to the scientific endeavor— they allow us to more accurately identify data that are critical to informing policy and practice. One of the challenges fac...
Date published:
Jul 28, 2022
Blog
Accelerating Research on Special Education
Years ago, I taught in an inner-city middle school. I was a utility infielder, and over the course of my teaching "career" I taught science, math, English, English as a second language, sex education—and, my favorite, a classroom of students with disabilities. I didn't do a particularly good job in any of these subjects, but I did learn firsthand (a) what a difficult job teaching is and (b) the consequences of teacher shortages that lead to unqualified (or semi-qualified), untrained young ...
Date published:
Jul 14, 2022
Blog
An Overlooked Success: IPEDS Outcome Measures
When I first met Margaret Spellings in 2004, she was the Secretary of Education, and I was an anxious candidate for the position of Commissioner of Education Statistics. At the time, I was working as a professor of political science at Stony Brook University, where I studied education innovations and the role of information in helping parents and students find schools that better matched their interests and needs. I assumed the interview would focus on K-12 education. Instead, Secretary Spel...
Date published:
Jun 15, 2022
Blog
Using Prize Competitions to Revamp IES' R&D Infrastructure
As many of you know, as part of its 20th Year Anniversary, IES has been undertaking an extensive modernization of its approach to R&D. Through this work, we are learning to speed up the testing of innovations, learning how to fail fast, and learning how to replicate successful innovations across an increasingly heterogeneous population—all to learn what works for whom under what conditions. There's the old joke: "cheaper, faster, better—pick two." But a strong, well-built education resea...
Date published:
Jun 02, 2022
Blog
Statement on A Vision and Roadmap for Education Sciences
Today, NASEM released A Vision and Roadmap for Education Statistics, which focuses on the priorities, products, and operations at NCES. As the federal statistical agency charged with collecting and disseminating education data, NCES is key to how IES provides scientific evidence to educators, researchers, and policymakers. The report highlights opportunities for NCES to adapt, expand, and meet the needs of an evolving evidence-based approach to education policy and practice. The NASEM panel'...
Date published:
Apr 07, 2022
Blog
Statement on The Future of Education Research at IES
Today, NASEM released The Future of Education Research at IES, which focuses on the research priorities and funding processes at NCER and NCSER. The education research that these two centers conduct is central to the IES mission and to the important underlying goal of improving the quality of education in the United States. We are encouraged that NASEM's recommendations for IES research activities align with our values and offer important considerations as we chart a path for the future to m...
Date published:
Mar 31, 2022
Blog
Statement on A Pragmatic Future for NAEP
In preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), I joined with IES Center commissioners to to set a vision for the future of IES. We commissioned the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to conduct a review of work core to our mission and to provide guidance on how best to hold ourselves to the values of transparency, accountability, and modernization. Today, NASEM released the first of these reports, A Pragmatic Future for NA...
Date published:
Mar 24, 2022
Blog
"Education Runs on Lies"
The title of this blog is taken from the opening of Arne Duncan's 2018 book How Schools Work. This was not a new theme for Duncan. In 2010, he said: "As a country we've dummied down standards. We've reduced them due to political pressure and, we've actually been lying to children and parents telling them they're ready when they're not . . . " As a reminder, Duncan was Secretary of Education under President Obama from 2009 through 2015—not a "usual suspect" for such a damning criticism of A...
Date published:
Mar 23, 2022
Blog
Recap: The 2022 Annual Principal Investigators Meeting
IES held its annual Principal Investigators Meeting from January 25–27. I gave opening remarks; I thought that I would share the key points of that talk with a wider audience. Standards for Excellence in Education Research Most of my talk was focused on the Standards for Excellence in Education Research, including some of the steps IES took to promote SEER in 2021 and laying out a few of the developments IES anticipates making in 2022. As a reminder, SEER encourages researchers to— At th...
Date published:
Feb 02, 2022
Blog
The Year in Data (Education): IES Takes Steps to Catalyze a New Field
I invited Zarek Drozda, who is currently serving as an IES fellow, to share some of the exciting work IES and the Department of Education are supporting to accelerate the use and understanding of data science. IES regularly employs fellows with subject matter expertise or specialized skillsets to help the agency spearhead work in new areas. In Spring 2021, Zarek joined IES from the University of Chicago to facilitate research, conduct technical assistance, and help IES learn more about the n...
Date published:
Dec 20, 2021
Blog
IES Learning Acceleration Challenges
Early next year, IES plans to announce two new prize competitions: one to incentivize innovation in middle school science instruction and another to improve mathematics achievement for elementary students with disabilities. As with any prize competition, we hope to spur new thinking about how to improve student performance and encourage the participation of developers and program providers who are willing to systematically test the effectiveness of their interventions. We anticipate a grand...
Date published:
Dec 14, 2021
Blog
Gathering Speed with SEERNet, Prize Competitions, and More
On Friday, October 22, we celebrated the launch of the SEERNet digital learning network. This is the latest IES effort to modernize, accelerate, and scale up education research. I was invited to provide some introductory remarks. For those of you who missed the event, this blog captures the gist of my comments, providing an update on many of IES' current and planned initiatives and how SEERNet fits with them. SEERNet is designed to speed up the pace of research on digital learning. Digital P...
Date published:
Nov 09, 2021
Blog
''Better is Good''
The NASEM panel on IES' research centers is entering the home stretch, and we should all be looking forward to its recommendations. I hope that you have attended some of the public meetings or communicated with the panel (I have been following their work carefully and weighing in frequently—perhaps to the chagrin of the panel directors and staff). There are a few issues the panel is dealing with that are on my mind, and I hope the panel comes up with some actionable recommendations—but I...
Date published:
Sep 15, 2021
Blog
Update on the IES Use of ARP Funds
As you may remember, IES received $100 million through the American Rescue Plan (ARP) to respond to the overwhelming learning challenges posed by COVID-19. This is an update on how we are using those funds to invest in research grants, gather data through the School Pulse, and make sure that the information we generate about accelerating learning is translated into forms that are useful, usable, and used. Investing in research The School Pulse. The 2021–22 school year will be a critical ye...
Date published:
Aug 31, 2021
Blog
The Conference Circuit Reboots + What AI is Leaving Behind
Last week, for the first time since the world closed down in March 2020, I attended a mostly in-person conference—the ASU+GSV Summit, held in San Diego. It was an "interesting" experience and highlighted some of the challenges we can expect as we begin to recover from the pandemic. First, allow me to expound on these challenges for those of you contemplating when to rejoin the conference circuit. Then I want to share some of my takeaways from the summit and the implications for education r...
Date published:
Aug 24, 2021
Blog
If it wasn't for bad news, would there be any news at all?
Not, it seems, when it comes to NAEP. On May 25, IES released the latest results of the NAEP science assessment. Those of you who have followed NAEP releases in reading and math, or who have seen my previous blogs about those results, could probably guess what the science scores look like. In the world of student performance as reflected in NAEP, "no change in scores" is about the best news we get. And so it is with the latest science results: little change overall, with students at the bott...
Date published:
May 26, 2021
Blog
Charting the Future of NCES: Our First NASEM Panel Discussion
Charting the Future of NCES: Our First NASEM Panel Discussion On May 10, NASEM and IES staff convened the first public panel meeting to discuss the future of NCES. I thought I would share with you some of the themes we explored and hopefully tempt you to attend the next panel, slated for May 26. NASEM will solicit public comments at various times during their discovery and writing processes, so I am taking the opportunity to give you a heads up. Mapping the future, unrestrained by the past D...
Date published:
May 24, 2021
Blog
Catching Up When You Started Behind
I feel compelled to revisit a theme that has appeared in several earlier blogs—in part because, as IES becomes more focused on how best to help students catch up on unfinished learning resulting from the pandemic, the severity of the problem is becoming clearer. We know that the pandemic was a catastrophe for students. Estimates of just how much students have fallen behind vary from bad to very, very bad (excuse the technical language), and we have some evidence from OECD that this learnin...
Date published:
May 04, 2021
Blog
Turning to the Future
In part 1 of my anniversary blog, I documented IES' progress on many fronts; but there's a lot more to do. First, and foremost, I hope that the three NASEM studies we have commissioned will provide a strong foundation for the next five years at IES. These reports—one on updating the research mission of IES, one on the future shape of NCES, and one on modernizing NAEP technology—will be delivered in time to help IES celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2022. I hope the NASEM research report ...
Date published:
Apr 14, 2021
Blog
Reflecting on Three Years at IES
This blog is part 1 of a three-year anniversary card to myself—and hopefully not an overly self-indulgent one. Here, I look back at some of the highpoints of the three years I have served as director of IES. In part 2, I will outline some of the challenges IES will be taking on for the remaining three years of my term. Living by the Standards for Excellence in Education Research I think perhaps the most important accomplishment of my tenure to date has been the articulation of SEER princip...
Date published:
Apr 07, 2021
Blog
Compete to win the XPRIZE Digital Learning Challenge
On Monday, March 22, IES announced its first sponsorship of an XPRIZE. The Digital Learning Challenge is designed to incentivize developers of digital learning platforms to build, modify, and then test an infrastructure to run rigorous experiments that can be implemented and replicated faster than traditional on-ground randomized control trials. The long-term goal of the competition is to modernize, accelerate, and improve the ways in which we identify effective learning tools and processes ...
Date published:
Mar 22, 2021
Blog
The Road to Learning Recovery
I am pleased to announce that IES has been awarded $100 million from the American Rescue Plan to conduct research related to learning losses caused by COVID-19. IES will use these funds to help support learning recovery. I want to share with you some of our current and planned activities and invite your thoughts. An executive order from President Biden: Survey our schools IES was singled out in one of President Biden's first executive orders with a directive to administer a survey identifyin...
Date published:
Mar 16, 2021
Blog
A Year for Reflection and Continued Transformation
Happy New Year! In anticipation of our 20th anniversary in 2022, IES has planned a year to identify opportunities for growth and change in education research. I want to bring you up to date on a few such activities. First, I want to call your attention to the "transformative" research RFA that IES posted just before the holidays. When I was the commissioner of NCES between 2005 and 2008, Department of Education leadership met several times with DARPA to try to understand their model and impo...
Date published:
Jan 12, 2021
Blog
Operation Reverse the Loss, Redux
Since I announced Operation Reverse the Loss last month, we at IES have been working to flesh out some of the key ideas. A valuable thought partner in this work is Kumar Garg, current Managing Director of Schmidt Futures and previous leader of President Obama's Educate to Innovate campaign. I invited him to co-author this blog. We have identified three main “buckets” of actions that IES should pursue to help reverse pandemic-related learning loss: Understanding the Crisis Establish a ...
Date published:
Dec 09, 2020
Blog
Res ipsa loquitur
I learned this Latin phrase from my attorney daughter. It's one of the most powerful statements in the law: "the thing speaks for itself." No elaborations or argument needed. Boom—there it is. This came to mind when on October 28, we released the final set of results from the 2019 reading and math assessments. These were only at the national level (no state level data). The results were devastating—even more so because they mirrored the findings from 4th and 8th grade reading and math, r...
Date published:
Nov 02, 2020
Blog
Introducing Operation Reverse the Loss
We are now nearly eight months into arguably the greatest education crisis the nation has faced in our lifetime. As I discussed last month, if the estimates of learning loss resulting from COVID-19 as presented by the Annenberg Center in June and, more recently, by Macke Raymond, are anywhere near correct, our nation is facing a catastrophe. Even as we focus on today's precipitous decline in learning, Covid-19 has shined a bright light on the fact that too many of our students—especially s...
Date published:
Oct 26, 2020
Blog
On Learning and Loss in a Time of Covid
I begin this blog with a short report from my own personal encounter with schooling in the COVID era—but this will lead to a broader set of issues affecting all of us as we enter a new school year structured by responses to the pandemic. My older daughter lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. She is a single mom, a high-powered, busy attorney, with two sons, one 12, the other 10. The last time I visited them was in early March and I flew back to DC just a few days shy of when the world shut d...
Date published:
Sep 28, 2020
Blog
The Value of Cost Analysis
August 20 was the deadline for this year's grant applications. I want to recognize the extraordinary efforts that education researchers expended to meet this deadline. Faced with the seemingly endless demands (and fears) engendered by the pandemic, the education science community came through with about the same number of proposals as other years. Congratulations (or should it be commiserations?) and thanks! This is the second in a series of blogs I am writing about SEER. When IES started do...
Date published:
Aug 31, 2020
Blog
Acting on Diversity
Since the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others, IES leadership has done soul searching as we continue to grapple with the educational (and societal) conditions that established present-day patterns of inequities. We are trying to find actions not just words that help us more fully realize the language in ESRA charging the Director with the responsibility for ensuring that IES' work is conducted in a manner that is “objective, secular, neutral, and nonideological and fr...
Date published:
Aug 06, 2020
Blog
IES Plays the Long Game
As the nation faces a new school year, uncertain about reopening schools, wary of a resurgence of Covid-19, and scarred from months of unplanned homeschooling, it can be hard to maintain focus on the essential work all of us continue to pursue. If you haven't seen it, I recommend the Washington Post article: "Yes, balancing work and parenting is impossible. Here's the data." But as Billie Holliday put it in her classic "Crazy He Calls Me": So, even if life sometimes seems impossible, we wil...
Date published:
Jul 22, 2020
Blog
New Directions for Next Year's Funding Opportunities
IES just released RFAs for its largest grant programs. A guiding principle has been to simplify the substance of the RFAs to allow researchers more freedom to pursue new ideas and approaches that will lead to improved education outcomes within budget constraints. Even as we are simplifying the RFAs, we continue to emphasize the need for cost analysis and are asking for more dissemination activities. Given these heightened demands, most RFAs have higher funding limits than in the past. We co...
Date published:
May 27, 2020
Blog
IES Centers: A Reassessment
At the end of March, the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the American Education Research Association (AERA) sent a joint letter to Congress focused on shortfalls in the budget and staffing levels for the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES). In that letter, ASA and AERA also dismissed the proposal that a new center focused on education assessments be created within IES, moving NAEP and the international assessments (such as TIMSS, PISA, and PIAAC) out of NCES into this c...
Date published:
May 12, 2020
Blog
Making Common Measures More Common
Researchers are, by nature, creative. They devise new interventions, tools, and methods as they try to identify ways to improve learning outcomes across the life course. But there is one crucial area in which their creativity has complicated our ability to identify what works: the failure to use commonly accepted and well-understood outcome measures. Researchers develop their own measures for many reasons. For example, available measures may not cover an aspect of a learner's experience tha...
Date published:
May 05, 2020
Blog
A New Tool to Support Cost Analysis in Education Research
IES is committed to having its funded researchers conduct appropriate economic analysis as part of their studies. This has been a heavy lift for many of our applicants and grantees, since economic analysis requires a skill set that is different from what has been "traditionally" used or taught in graduate training programs in the education sciences. We emphasize cost analysis because that information can help determine the level of resources needed to implement a specific program and can he...
Date published:
Apr 14, 2020
Blog
IES in a Time of Pandemic
Who would have thought that in such a short time our world could be turned upside down, disrupting our schools, our colleges, our lives? The coronavirus pandemic is also among the most consequential challenges to how IES conducts work and does business we have ever faced. Every video conference reminds me of the value of in-person meetings. I miss the mindset that comes with wearing a suit and tie, though I must admit there's something to be said for working in jeans and a t-shirt. My great...
Date published:
Mar 31, 2020
Blog
Scaling is the New Black
I recently had the opportunity to welcome several hundred of the field's experts to the annual peer review meetings for the Research Center's grant applications. At that meeting, I talked about the importance of SEER principles. I thought I would share with you current IES thinking about one of them: scaling. If we were to extract the key components of our Congressional mission as laid out in ESRA, our authorizing legislation, we would probably get to a statement that looks something like th...
Date published:
Mar 03, 2020
Blog
Research-Practice Partnerships, Redux
Over the past few months I have received many questions about the extent to which IES supports Research-Practice Partnerships (RPPs). I fear that my critique of the shortcomings of our previous RPP approach has generalized into a perception that I am hostile to partnerships. Worse, this has somehow generated questions about my support for working with SEAs and LEAs. I have gone on record many times and in many places stating the obvious: it is impossible to imagine a world of applied educati...
Date published:
Feb 04, 2020
Blog
A New Look for IES
Over the next few months, IES will begin rolling out a new logo and visual identity, an undertaking that has been in the works for about a year. Full implementation will take some time, but don't be surprised when you see a new look on our publications and social media. While we're excited about the new visual identity, this post is not about the new logo, the color scheme, or the symbolism behind the design choices. My patience for these discussions has been exhausted by the redesign itself...
Date published:
Jan 22, 2020
Blog
A New Year's Update from the Director of IES
The following is based on my welcome to IES' principal investigators meeting, January 8, 2020, at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. I think it will give the entire IES "community" a sense of our progress and our challenges. Mark SchneiderDirector, IES I have been Director of IES for about 20 months. I want to begin by reviewing what we have accomplished in those months and then laying out some of the challenges that will occupy IES for the coming year and beyond. What we have ac...
Date published:
Jan 08, 2020
Blog
Update on Topic Areas and Other Thoughts About Upcoming RFAs
Here's an update on several months of work trying to reimagine IES' research topics. I thought my focus on changing topic areas was going to be a gangbuster reform; however, few people shared my enthusiasm. I thank all of you who took the time to send their thoughts and opinions about the topic areas—but the consensus was “Why bother?” This does not mean that this effort was a failure—indeed, there were important lessons to be had. And even if existing topic areas remain for now,...
Date published:
Dec 09, 2019
Blog
We Need Your Feedback on Research Topics: Who Gets Voted Off the Island?
I know that many of you are busy responding to the current crop of RFAs. But I thought I would bring you up to date on some things in the works at IES that may affect future research support. IES needs feedback from the field on these issues relatively quickly if—as we intend—your advice affects how we frame next year's grants. Short-term “off-cycle” competitions We are considering whether to release three topic specific RFAs in the middle of next winter. To reiterate, we are consi...
Date published:
Aug 13, 2019
Blog
Some Thoughts on the New IES RFAs
IES is in the process of releasing this year's RFAs. Here's a link to the Federal Register announcement. I thought I would share our perspective on a few themes in this year's grant competitions. We are embedding the Standards for Excellence in Education Research (SEER) throughout the RFAs. SEER codifies good science practices and we envision these standards as moving education research to the next stage, building on the revolution in strong methods Russ Whitehurst and IES launched in ...
Date published:
Jun 19, 2019
Blog
First Year Accomplishments
I am nearing the end of my first year as Director of IES. I thought I would report on some of the things we have been working on over the last year. I originally intended to write a single update, but realized that it would be too long. Instead, I plan to write a few shorter pieces over the next few weeks, as time allows. First, let me note that for the first time in over five years, all the senior leadership positions in IES have been filled with skilled professionals appointed according to...
Date published:
Apr 23, 2019
Blog
List of Proposed Interventions for the Systematic Replication RFA
IES is working on next year's RFAs, which we hope to release later this spring. As you may know, we are initiating a research competition focused on the systematic replication of interventions that IES believes have strong evidence of impact. The purpose and general outline of that competition can be found here. I want to share with you a list of the NCER- and NCSER-funded studies that we are interested in having systematically replicated. These interventions meet the following criteria: Sin...
Date published:
Apr 15, 2019
Blog
The Leaning Tower of PISA
I was recently involved in an exchange about PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment, in which I argued that PISA is stuck in a three-year testing cycle that is no longer necessary. It's not just that the three-year cycle is too short and too expensive—which it is—it's that the current cycle ultimately detracts from the quality of PISA. The three-year cycle means that critical R&D work—including fundamentals, such as correcting errors, confirming the accuracy of tran...
Date published:
Mar 03, 2019
Blog
A More Systematic Approach to Replicating Research
IES’ two research centers, the National Center for Education Research (NCER) and the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER), have funded around 450 projects testing whether interventions improve student outcomes. Most of the roughly 300 completed projects have found no impact, conforming to Peter Rossi’s “Iron Law of Evaluation” that the expected value of any impact assessment of any large scale social program is zero.
Date published:
Dec 17, 2018
Blog
How to Make Education Research Relevant to Teachers
Research shows that good teachers are the most important ingredient that schools can provide to help students succeed. This is especially true for struggling schools.
Date published:
Nov 14, 2018
Blog
Developing an Evidence Base for Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships
I recently attended the annual meeting of the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships. I was joined by well over 100 others who represented a wide swath of partnerships (RPPs), most supported by IES funds. When it comes to research, academic researchers and practitioners often have different needs and different time frames. On paper, RPPs look like a way to bridge that divide. Over the last few years, IES has made some large investments in RPPs. The Institute's National...
Date published:
Jul 30, 2018
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