IES Blog

International and national assessment data show that many U.S. students struggle with mathematics, and there continues to be a gap between students with and without disabilities. The recent 2022 NAEP mathematics results continue to showcase these disparities, which have been further exacerbated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for lower-performing students and students of color.

In honor of Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month, we want to highlight the research IES is supporting to improve mathematics achievement and access to educational opportunities for all learners, especially learners who have been historically underserved and underrepresented in STEM education.

IES is supporting research through its discretionary grant competitions to measure, explore, develop, and evaluate effective mathematics programs, practices, and policies for all students, including those with or at risk for disabilities. Here are a few highlights of some new research supported by IES:

• Interleaved Mathematics Practice – Bryan Matlen (WestEd) and colleagues are conducting a systematic replication of a highly promising mathematics learning intervention, interleaved practice, in 7th grade classrooms. With the interleaved practice intervention, some of the assigned math practice problems are rearranged so that problems of different kinds are mixed together, which improves learning, and problems of the same kind are distributed across multiple assignments, which improves retention. Numerous studies in the laboratory and classroom have demonstrated that merely rearranging practice problems so that the students receive a higher dose of interleaved practice can dramatically boost scores on measures of learning. This replication study will determine whether this promising intervention can improve math learning and achievement and whether the intervention can scale to a widely-used online intervention that currently reaches tens of thousands of students in diverse settings.
• Educational Technology Approaches to K-12 Mathematics – Jennifer Morrison (Johns Hopkins University) and colleagues are conducting a meta-analysis of rigorous evaluations of approaches that use technology to improve student mathematics achievement in grades K to 12. Using meta-analytic techniques, the team will be identifying conditions under which various types of technology applications are most effective in teaching mathematics. The results will provide researchers and education leaders with up-to-date information on effective uses of technology, including computer assisted instruction, cooperative learning, intelligent tutoring systems, games, simulations, virtual reality, inquiry/discovery, project-based learning, and media-infused instruction.
• Specialized Intervention to Reach All Learners - Sarah Powell (University of Texas at Austin) and colleagues are conducting an initial efficacy evaluation of Math SPIRAL, an educator-provided mathematics intervention for students identified as needing intervention services through state achievement testing in grades four and five. Educators are provided with an evidence-based word problem intervention (Pirate Math Equation Quest), associated professional development, and coaching to support implementation and address the needs of their learners who are struggling in math. The research team will evaluate the impact of Math SPIRAL on mathematics outcomes for upper elementary students identified as being with or at risk for a disability. The results will provide information on the efficacy of Math SPIRAL as a tool to accelerate the learning of students in need of math intervention.
• Math and Reading Acquisition Co-Adaptive System – Jess Gropen (Center for Applied Special Technology), Steve Ritter (Carnegie Learning), and their research team are iteratively developing and studying a set of individualized reading supports for students embedded within an adaptive mathematics learning system (MATHia) and an associated teacher application (LiveLab). Heuristics will determine when reading supports or scaffolds should be provided or recommended to students. In addition, adaptive supports for teachers will alert them when students are likely exhibiting reading challenges and provide recommendations for intervention. The findings will determine whether these reading supports that can be embedded into a variety of digital and/or adaptive math tools to decrease reading challenges and increase students' ability to engage effectively with math. The findings and generated technical resources (such as design assets and heuristics) will be Creative Commons licensed and made available through GitHub for use by other developers.

In August 2022, IES also launched the Learning Acceleration Challenge (LAC) Math Prize to identify and award school-based, digital interventions that significantly improve math outcomes for upper elementary school students with or at risk for a disability that affects math performance. Interventions for the Math Prize needed to specifically focus on fractions and could also include prerequisite skills such as whole numbers and operations. Two interventions are currently competing for the math prize and the winner will be announced Fall 2023.

In addition, IES has developed Practice Guides with evidence-based recommendations for educators to address challenges in their classrooms and schools. A list of the mathematics focused Practice Guides can be found here.

This blog was written by Christina Chhin (christina.chhin@ed.gov), NCER; Sarah Brasiel (sarah.brasiel@ed.gov), NCSER; and Britta Bresina (britta.bresina@ed.gov), NCSER.

Whenever we get the chance to share information about the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) program with the public, we’re often asked, “How are the 2022-2027 RELs different from past REL cycles?” In this blog, we focus on one major new effort that each REL is undertaking: the creation of a toolkit for educators based on one of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guides. Each REL toolkit will include a set of resources for educators to implement and institutionalize evidence-based recommendations from a WWC Practice Guide. Importantly, each REL is co-developing their resources with educators, school, and district leaders or with postsecondary faculty and staff to ensure the toolkits’ relevance and actionability. Following the toolkit development phase, RELs will partner with educators not involved in developing the toolkits to test the usability of each toolkit and its efficacy in improving student and teacher outcomes. The RELs have current partners for toolkit development and usability testing but are looking for partner schools, districts, and postsecondary institutions in which to test the efficacy of the toolkits. These efficacy-testing partners will be among the first to benefit from the evidence-based toolkits.

Why this investment of REL and partner time and resources? WWC Practice Guides are among IES’ premier resources for translating evidence on effective practice into accessible and usable strategies for educators. Each Guide is based on a synthesis of the most rigorous research on teaching a particular subject or achieving a particular education goal. Each Guide is also based on the input of a panel of expert practitioners and researchers and includes—

• Key recommendations for educational practice based on a synthesis of rigorous research
• Supporting evidence for each recommendation
• Steps to carry out each recommendation
• Examples of the practices
• Discussions of common implementation challenges and strategies for overcoming those challenges

RELs Emphasize Active Learning to Support Implementation of Evidence-Based Practices

Although WWC Practice Guides are some of IES’ most popular products, we also know that teachers and leaders cannot simply read about a new practice to master it. Instead, they need to engage in active learning by observing the new practice, discussing it, implementing it, receiving feedback on the practice, and continuing to improve. The REL toolkits are designed to support educators in the creation and implementation of a professional learning community (PLC) focused on the evidence-based practices outlined in a WWC Practice Guide. In these PLCs, educators will learn about the Practice Guide recommendations by reading about the practices, discussing them with colleagues, and by developing plans for implementing the practices in their classrooms. Educators will also put those plans into action and then debrief on those implementation experiences. To support this work, the toolkits will include PLC guides, workbooks, self-study guides, and rubrics. Some toolkits will also include videos of teachers effectively implementing the practices.

Each toolkit will also include the following:

• An initial diagnostic and ongoing monitoring instrument for assessing instructional practices against the practices recommended in the WWC Practice Guide
• A tool that enables teachers, teacher leaders, and administrators to assess the extent to which their school, district or postsecondary institution supports the implementation and ongoing monitoring of the evidence-based practice recommendations
• A discussion of implementation steps for institutionalizing supports that help educators, building leaders, and other administrators adopt the evidence-based practices and sustain them over time

Some RELs have already started usability testing of their toolkits. Across 2025 and 2026, nine of our 10 RELs will publish final versions of their toolkits and efficacy studies on their toolkit. Both will be freely available on the REL website.[1] Visit our Newsflash page and sign up to receive newsflashes from the RELs and the IES center that houses the program—the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE).[2]

Partner with RELs: Help IES Study REL Toolkits

RELs will soon recruit partner schools, districts, and postsecondary institutions in their regions to conduct the toolkit efficacy studies. If you are interested in having your school, district, or institution participate in an efficacy study and benefit from being one of the first users of these toolkits, please email us at Elizabeth.Eisner@ed.gov or Chris.Boccanfuso@ed.gov. The efficacy study for each REL’s toolkit must take place within each REL’s region. Not sure which REL region is yours? Check out the “About the RELs page” on the IES website or the map visualization on our program homepage.

If you have other questions, concerns, or ideas about this work, please reach out to us. We welcome your input so that you can help IES and the RELs make the toolkits as useful and effective as possible.

Liz Eisner, Associate Commissioner for Knowledge Use

Chris Boccanfuso, REL Branch Chief

In honor of Autism Awareness Month, we took a deep look into NCSER-funded research on augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and/or moderate-to-severe intellectual disabilities (ID) who have complex communication needs. Principal investigators Drs. Ganz, Reichle, and Pustejovsky discussed their research on AAC (such as communication board or speech output device), which provides an alternative means of communication for persons who are nonverbal or minimally verbal and ensures they have the opportunity to communicate their wants and needs. This research team’s current IES project examines treatment intensity factors (how often or how long an intervention takes place) related to teaching AAC use. In the interview below, they discuss their current project and how it builds upon their previous research on AAC interventions.

What is the purpose of your current project?

Individuals with ASD and/or ID who have complex communication needs typically require intensive, costly, and individualized educational interventions to develop communication. However, there is little information to guide parents and instructional personnel in selecting the most effective dose and duration of treatment. Similarly, there is a lack of guidance about when and how treatment integrity and strategies for generalization (use in various contexts) and maintenance (sustaining treatment over time) affect treatment outcomes. The purpose of this current project is to examine the effects of various treatment intensity parameters on expressive communication outcomes for students with ASD and/or ID through a meta-analysis. This investigation aims to guide the development of protocols for instructional personnel and parents so they can implement efficient, acceptable, and effective treatment for improving communication for these students.

What motivated you to conduct this research?

Educational interventions to treat ASD can be costly. This can lead to disparities wherein wealthier families can access high-quality services while most Americans cannot. Social services—including educational and healthcare services—are typically underfunded, impeding the provision of quality services for this population. For example, behavioral experts have recommended 25-40 hours per week of intensive, one-on-one educational and behavioral services for young children with ASD. However, there has been limited research aimed at comparing the relative efficacy of interventions based on various factors associated with treatment intensity. Not all individuals will need the same level of treatment intensity, but more research is needed to understand how treatment intensity needs can be differentiated by student characteristics, intervention types, and service context. Interventions that are efficient and tailored to individual student need may allow them to be more accessible to a wider range of families. In addition to studying these factors, this project aims to develop a treatment integrity template that can be used by others in determining appropriate treatment intensity levels for a range of interventions and populations. Such investigations hold promise for significant improvements in intervention efficiency, potentially giving schools ways to effectively serve more individuals.

Our goal is to provide information to family members and practitioners to enable them to better individualize AAC interventions, allowing them to match treatment intensity needs to individual characteristics, precursor skills, background, and consumer preferences and needs. By doing so, we can provide guidance for the allocation of services where needs are greatest.

How does this project build upon your previous research in AAC?

In 2021, we completed a research project that examined AAC interventions using similar meta-analytic methods with the same population as those studied in our current research. In that project, we focused on the ways in which instructional features and contexts are associated with learner performance. We found that AAC interventions are commonly implemented in school, home, and community settings with no significant differences in learner outcomes based on the setting. This tells us that AAC use does not need to be limited to one setting and can include caregivers and family members in this process. Across studies, a wide range of instructional strategies were used to teach AAC use, with behavioral and naturalistic strategies the most common.

Similarly, there was a range of teaching formats used during instruction. We looked at instructor- versus child-led, contrived versus naturalistic, and one-on-one versus group contexts, with structured approaches (one-on-one instruction, instructor-led, and contrived learning opportunities) the most common. However, just as with settings, no significant differences in outcomes were observed across instructional strategies or formats, indicating that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to AAC use and it can be individualized to the needs of each learner. The current grant offers a close examination of treatment intensity factors—such as how many sessions of intervention per week, how many minutes per session, and how many communicative opportunities the learner has during each session—and their potential effect on learner performance. Overall, the study asks, “what is the association between AAC dosage and successful learner outcomes?”

What can your research tell us about the relationship between education outcomes and AAC use for students with ASD and ID

We are hopeful that it will provide clarity for successful intervention protocols by specifying aspects of treatment intensity. Factors of treatment intensity and related intervention characteristics we are looking at include dosage rate, duration, form, and frequency; total intervention duration; degree that the treatment is implemented with integrity; and implementation of generalization and maintenance strategies. Additionally, we will explore possible associations between key skills that are important for students with ASD and ID to develop (such as imitation and matching) and choice of treatment intensity parameters.

Communication is the basis for most other learning, including social skills, literacy, and other functional life skills; thus, improving and increasing communication production and comprehension for individuals with ASD and ID who are minimally verbal or nonverbal will build a foundation for further academic and functional progress.

What do families and caregivers need to know about AAC use?

We believe that families should encourage communication in a range of modalities, including aided AAC, but also natural gestures, speech, and speech approximations. Although there is a myth that AAC use discourages speech, research has shown that individuals often learn speech simultaneously with AAC learning. Further, by increasing fluent communication, frustration and challenging behavior are often decreased. Communication in all forms must be targeted across people, settings, and vocabulary to provide minimally verbal and nonverbal individuals with opportunities to learn and use new language.

We hope to provide information to family members and practitioners that better enables them to individualize AAC interventions, allowing them to match treatment intensity needs to individual characteristics, precursor skills, background, and consumer preferences and needs. By doing so, we will be able to target services where needs are greatest and preserve resources for those in most need.

Many thanks to Drs. Ganz, Reichle and Pustejovsky for sharing their work with our readers!

Joe Reichle serves as the PI for this project and is a former Department Chair and current Professor Emeritus in the Department of Communication Disorders at the University of Minnesota.

J. Birdie Ganz is a professor of Special Education at Texas A&M University and serves as current Project Director and co-PI for this project.

James Pustejovsky is an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and serves as co-PI for this project.

This blog was written by Shanna Bodenhamer, virtual student federal service intern at IES and graduate student at Texas A&M University. She also serves as a research assistant on this project.

When it comes to using research to inform practice, teachers tend to want succinct tips and strategies that can work in their own classrooms. Researchers can use social media channels to tailor their messages from their research findings and disseminate where teachers are already active. In this guest blog, Dr. Sam Van Horne, University of Delaware, describes the work that researchers conducted as part of the originally IES-funded Center for Research Use in Education. The goal of the center was to understand the gaps between researcher and practitioner perspectives on the usefulness of research in practice so that the center can address issues around how researcher communicate about their research, how practitioners can use research more effectively in their classrooms, and how to build stronger connections between the two communities.

Using a large cross-sectional survey of school-based practitioners, we found that practitioners report consuming research through multiple channels, and more than half of reported using social media in the last year with the goal of improving their practice. Social media channels, therefore, provide education researchers with an opportunity to connect with practitioners, but where are researchers likely to find teachers on social media? And how can researchers distill their findings for sharing in mediums that are vastly different than traditional academic forms? Here are some recommendations based on our research.

• Finding and Connecting with Educators on Social Media: One review of research about social media use among teachers found that Facebook and Twitter are some of the main sites that teachers use. But teachers also use Pinterest and Instagram as methods for learning from other teachers about teaching strategies. Posting in multiple channels may make it more likely that a message can reach educators. To find educators, researchers can search for public lists on education-focused topics or see who is using hashtags like #edtwitter, #TeachersofInstagram, or #EduTooters. By following lists, researchers can efficiently find educators to follow and tag (i.e., add the educator’s username to a social media message) with their messages about research-informed practice. This can aid with directly engaging practitioners and beginning conversations about applying research to practice.
• Using Hashtags or Tagging Specific People on Social Media: Social media networks like Twitter can overwhelm users with the volume of content being shared, so it’s critical to use tools like hashtags to find a practice-focused community who may be interested in applying research findings. Users search for content with hashtags that are discipline specific or likely to reach educators, such as #edutooters on Mastodon, #edutwitter on Twitter, or #teachersofinstagram or #teachersfollowteachers on Instagram. The key is identifying teachers or knowledge brokers (i.e., people or organizations who support practitioners in applying research evidence to teaching practice) that may be interested in the message and who may retweet or boost the message to their own followers.
• Tailoring Messages to Focus on What Practitioners Can Do: When the audience is identified, researchers can ask themselves, “What do I want this group to consider doing based on these research findings?” Then, social media messages can incorporate those ideas rather than just summarizing research findings. Social media messages describing how research can inform education practice should be economical and capture interest. Links to the original paper can be appended to a post for those who want to read more.
•  When possible, include links to publications or resources in publicly available repositories and not to versions in subscription-based journals. IES grantees can increase the visibility of their research by submitting their publications as grantee submissions in ERIC. This not only fulfills public-access requirements but also gives practitioners access to important information for improving teaching practice.  
• Incorporating Visual Elements to Attract Attention to Education Research Findings: Messages that incorporate visual elements or video are better suited for sharing on social media. The visual abstract is a succinct summary of research findings that is well-suited for sharing in social media platforms, and researchers have found that visual abstracts are more often shared on social media platforms than plain text about research. You can find guidance on creating visual abstracts here, though the authors suggest collaborating with a designer. These visual abstracts are suited for visual platforms like Pinterest or Instagram. Some journals make a regular practice of posting brief video messages from authors who explain their research study and the significance of the findings. Animations can also attract more attention to messages about research.

Disseminating education research on social media is not a “one-and-done” practice but should be part of a professional social media presence. Many guides exist for developing a professional social media presence, such as these for Twitter and LinkedIn. In addition to posting about research and its implications for practice, researchers can post about research or general issues in the field. This helps with building a following that will be more likely to see posts about research. There are other benefits to disseminating research on social media channels, including providing researchers with metrics about how many times their messages are shared or retweeted (or boosted, on Mastodon), as well as enabling research about optimal ways to share research to reach the broadest audience. In fact, Dr. Farley-Ripple, a leader of CRUE, and colleagues have received funding from the National Science Foundation for a research study to investigate the effectiveness of different dissemination strategies on social media, including the effectiveness of the translational visual abstract.

Connecting with educators on social media is a process. Researchers can begin by creating a presence on social media networks where educators are found and then post often about education and use hashtags to help make messages visible to educators. Messages can be succinct posts that include recommendations or strategies that are feasible for educators to adopt or include multimedia messages like the translational visual abstract to attract attention in a medium that is suited to visuals. Over time, it’s possible to learn what works and what doesn’t and adapt strategies for reaching educators, while keeping in mind that the tools and networks available now will undoubtedly adapt and change themselves.

Sam Van Horne is a Data Scientist at the Center for Research Use in Education and the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy at the University of Delaware.

This blog was produced by Corinne Alfeld (Corinne.Alfeld@ed.gov), program officer, NCER.

In celebration of IES’s 20^th anniversary, we are highlighting NCER’s investments in field-initiated research on equity in education. In this guest blog interview, researchers Amy Ellen Schwartz and Sarah Cordes share the equity-related implications of their IES-funded research on school busing. The research team conducted four related studies as part of their IES grant. First, researchers examined the individual and school factors that may explain why some students ride the bus and others do not. Next, they explored the relationship between bus use and school choice, examining whether students who use the bus to attend a choice school attend a higher quality school than their zoned school. The final two studies explored the link between taking the bus and academic outcomes.

What motivated your research on school busing?

Both of us are very interested in how factors outside the classroom matter for students. The school bus is a critical school service; however, at the start of our research, we knew very little about ridership, commutes, or the relationships between school bus ridership and student outcomes. Given what we know about inequities in other school services and the geography of schooling, it seemed natural for us to explore whether sociodemographic disparities exist in access to and provision of school bus service. Although NYC, like many other urban districts, also provides passes for use on public transit, we chose to focus specifically on the school bus because districts have significantly more discretion to set policies around the school bus.

What were your findings about the relationship(s) between school busing and student outcomes?

Despite the popular images of the iconic yellow school bus as a fundamental part of American public education, there is wide variation in the availability and cost of school bus service across schools, districts, and states. As part of our IES-funded research, we examined the relationship between bus access/characteristics of the bus ride in New York City (NYC) and various outcomes including the likelihood that students attend a choice school, the quality of school attended, attendance, and test scores. Our research revealed four key findings:

1. Among NYC students who attend choice schools, those who use transportation, especially the school bus, are more likely to attend a school that is significantly better than their zoned school.
2. Transportation plays a particularly important role for Black and Hispanic students in NYC. Black and Hispanic students who use the bus to attend a choice school are 30-40 percentage points more likely to attend a significantly better school than Black or Hispanic students who attend a choice school but do not use transportation.
3. Access to the school bus in NYC is associated with higher attendance—bus riders are absent approximately one day less than non-riders and are about four percentage points less likely to be chronically absent. However, most of this gap is explained by differences in the schools that bus riders attend, as within-school disparities in attendance are small.
4. Although long bus rides (over 45 minutes) are relatively uncommon in NYC, students with long bus rides are disproportionately Black and more likely to attend charter or district choice schools. Further, long bus rides have negative effects on attendance and chronic absenteeism of district choice students and may have small negative effects on test scores among charter school students.

What does equity (or lack thereof) look like in the NYC school bus system?

This is a complicated question that is largely context specific. For example, equity in school bus systems in a choice-rich district like NYC looks different than equity in a district where most students attend their zoned schools. In NYC, the main determinant of school bus eligibility is how far a student lives from school based on their grade level. For example, students in K-2 are eligible for free transportation (MetroCard or school bus) if they attend a school that is more than half a mile from home. That said, “eligibility” for school bus transportation does not mean that students will be assigned to a school bus. This creates the potential for inequities.

Among students who attend the same school, we find no strong evidence of racial/ethnic disparities in bus access. This is not the case when we compare students who attend different schools. We found that while Black students are significantly more likely than any other racial/ethnic group to be eligible for the bus, eligible Black students are also less likely than any other group to be assigned to a bus. Specifically, among students who live far enough from school to be eligible for the bus, Black students are 4.3 percentage points less likely than White students and 4.8 percentage points less likely than Asian students to be assigned bus service. Hispanic students are least likely to be eligible for the bus based on how far they live from school. However, Hispanic students who are eligible for bus service are also less likely to receive it than White or Asian students.  

We identified two possible explanations for these disparities—routing restrictions and whether a school offers the bus. Bus routes in NYC cannot exceed 5 miles and cannot cross certain administrative boundaries. For example, a student cannot take a school bus from one borough to another. Due to these restrictions, there are some students who are eligible for the bus but cannot be placed on a route that follows these restrictions, so they receive a MetroCard instead. The second and main explanation for these disparities is that Black and Hispanic students are significantly less likely to attend a school that provides bus service, as the decision of whether to provide bus service is at the discretion of individual principals.

What potential policy implications does your research have?

Based on our findings, there are three important policy implications to consider. First, districts should consider mandating school bus service in all schools. Second, in the absence of universal bus service, districts should increase transparency about school-level bus provision so that families can factor this into their decisions about where to send their children to school. Finally, districts should consider the consequences of policies around school bus provision, such as route restrictions.

Amy Ellen Schwartz is the dean of the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration, University of Delaware. Her research spans a broad range of topics in education policy and urban economics, focusing on the nexus of schools, neighborhoods and public services and the causes and consequences of children’s academic, social and health outcomes. Dr. Schwartz is currently a co-PI and director of transportation research for the IES-funded National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice.

Sarah A. Cordes is an associate professor of policy, organizational and leadership studies within Temple University’s College of Education and Human Development and former IES Predoctoral Fellow. Her research focuses on the ways in which the urban context, including neighborhoods, housing, and charter schools, affect student outcomes.

This blog was produced by Katina Stapleton (Katina.Stapleton@ed.gov) and Virtual Student Federal Service Intern Audrey Im. It is part of a larger series on DEIA in Education Research.