IES Blog

Institute of Education Sciences

Gathering Public Input to Help IES Improve

UPDATED SEPTEMBER 5, 2017 

The Institute of Education Sciences is committed to continuous improvement and this includes gathering public input on our work and our resources. Right now, we are seeking feedback on two important aspects of our work:

  • Two of our research goals, Efficacy and Replication and Effectiveness; and
  • Revisions to the What Works Clearinghouse Standards and Procedures handbooks.

Brief overviews of these opportunities are below, with links to where you can get more information and how to submit input. And, as always, if you have thoughts or ideas on how IES can better serve the field, please email us at Contact.IES@ed.gov.

IES Research Goals

IES is seeking input on how we can improve our education and special education research programs, specifically around two of our five research goals—Efficacy and Replication (Goal 3), and Effectiveness (Goal 4). We want to know if these goals, as currently configured, are meeting the needs of the field and whether we should consider changes that would support more replication and effectiveness studies.

The request for feedback comes after IES convened a group of experts to discuss what should come after an efficacy study. This Technical Working Group met last fall and looked at the replication and effectiveness studies that IES has funded over the years and made suggestions on actions IES could take to increase the visibility and support of replication studies, encourage more effectiveness research, and further our understanding of causal mechanisms, variability in impacts, and implementation factors. We shared some of the findings and suggestions in a blog post earlier this year and posted a summary of the working group’s discussion on the IES website (PDF).

Please take a few moments to read the Invitation for Public Comment letter to see the specific questions we are seeking to answer, and send your input and ideas to Comments.Research@ed.gov. We ask that you respond by Monday, October 2, 2017.

What Works Clearinghouse Handbooks

IES is also seeking feedback on revisions to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Procedures and Standards Handbooks. The handbooks describe how the WWC reviews effectiveness research to determine what works in public education.

The proposed Handbooks (WWC Standards and WWC Procedures will now have separate handbooks) have been developed by the WWC in consultation with experts and are made available to users in draft form as part of the process for updating WWC standards. The handbooks can be reviewed on the WWC website and any comments can be sent to contact.wwc@ed.gov. Feedback is requested by August 30. (SEPT. 5 UPDATE: The deadline for submitting feedback has passed although questions and ideas are welcome at the same address.) 

The revisions to WWC handbooks are part of the WWC's ongoing work to increase transparency, refine its processes, develop new standards, and create new products. In fact, the WWC recently launched a new product that was developed based on public input.

For the latest IES, follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and receive email updates through the IES News Flash.

Compiled by Dana Tofig, Communications Director, IES

IES at the AERA Annual Meeting

By Dana Tofig, Communications Director, IES

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) will hold its annual meeting April 27 through May 1 in San Antonio, Texas. This is one of the nation’s largest educational research conferences and the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) will be well represented.

More than 100 sessions at the AERA meeting will feature IES staff or work supported by IES. Below is a brief overview, including links to lists of sessions. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook to read our #AERA17 posts. 

IES Staff at AERA

IES staff will participate in 20 different presentations, symposia, roundtables, and professional development sessions during the conference, providing information and insight about the wide range of work that we do.

One highlight will be on Sunday, April 30, 10:35 a.m. CT), during a session entitled Research Statistics, and Data: The Vital Role of the Institute of Education Sciences in Retrospect and Prospect. At the session, Thomas Brock, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Research (delegated the duties of IES director), and Peggy Carr, Acting Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, will be a part of a panel that will discuss the work IES has done over the past 15 years and what the work looks like going forward. They will be joined by other researchers and experts, including Northwestern University’s Larry Hedges, currently the Chair of the National Board for Education Sciences. This session will can be viewed for free via livestream, but you must register in advance.

Other presentations led by or featuring IES staff include sessions about funding opportunities and how to write an application for an IES grant; accessing and using data from NCES and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP); understanding and using international education data, including assessment results; and conversations about different data collections, including race and gender diversity, school-level finance, socioeconomic status and more.

Click here to see a full list of IES staff presentations at AERA.

IES-funded Work at AERA

More than 80 sessions at AERA will feature research and programs that were supported by IES grants and other funding sources. These presentations will cover a wide range of topics, from early childhood education to K-12 to postsecondary opportunities and beyond.

Many of our grantees will present findings from IES-funded research, including the results of IES Research and Development Centers, such as the National Center for Research on Gifted Education, the Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools, the Center for the Study of Adult Literacy, and the Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning.

IES-funded grants will be featured at several other sessions, including eight presentations that will present findings from our Cognition and Student Learning grant program, which builds understanding of how the mind works to inform and improve education practice in reading, writing, mathematics, science, and study skills.

In addition, researchers from several of the Regional Educational Laboratories will present findings on a variety of topics, including early education quality, English learners, teacher evaluations and mobility, college readiness, virtual learning, and much more. 

Also, the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice, an IES-funded Knowledge Utilization Center, will hold several sessions about what they have learned about how educators and policy makers access and use evidence in their decision making.

Click here to see a list of presentations on IES-funded research and programs. 

 

CTE Programs Ripe for Research and Evaluation

Each February, the education community highlights the important of Career and Technical Education (CTE) by celebrating National CTE Month. And this year, we are celebrating a milestone—2017 marks 100 years of CTE legislation.  Participation in CTE classes and programs continues to grow and, as we discussed in a previous blog, there is a critical need for more research in this area of education.

IES is beginning to help fill the CTE research gap. In 2016, the IES National Center for Education Research (NCER) funded a new study led by Professor Shaun Dougherty at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Dougherty (pictured right) and his colleagues will examine the impact of attending a CTE-focused high school on students' achievement, high school graduation, and college enrollment. This will be one of only a handful of studies to provide causal evidence about the impact that CTE has on students.

Specifically, the researchers will compare the outcomes of students attending one of 16 high schools in the Connecticut Technical High School System (CTHSS), where all students participate in some form of CTE, with those of students attending a traditional comprehensive high school, with fewer opportunities to participate in CTE. In addition, the research team will conduct school observations and interviews regarding CTE delivery (e.g., number of CTE programs, industry credentials, and work-based learning opportunities offered) in both types of high schools.

Although this is the first time that Dr. Dougherty has served as a Principal Investigator on an IES-funded grant, he has conducted other research on CTE across the country. IES also sponsors other CTE-related initiatives, including the National Center for Education Statistics’ CTE Statistics Program (which has a new website).

CTE programs are poised to grow in the future as the labor market requires more skilled workers and students seek alternative educational options that lead to rewarding careers. The education field needs high-quality CTE-focused research to provide evidence to support practice. In addition, multidisciplinary perspectives on CTE are needed from researchers in related fields, such as cognitive science, educational psychology, organizational psychology, sociology and economics. Researchers from these fields, as well as others examining CTE questions, are welcome to apply for IES research grants.

Written by Corinne Alfeld, Education Research Analyst, NCER 

#IES2016: The IES Year in Review

By Ruth Curran Neild, Delegated Director, IES

2016 was a busy year for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) as we continued our commitment to support a culture of evidence-use in education. Among our work over the past 12 months:

  • We released more than 200 publications, including statistical reports and data collections, research findings and compendia, program evaluations, intervention reports, educator’s practice guides  and more;
  • We made significant improvements to our communications and dissemination efforts, including a new IES website, an improved What Works Clearinghouse site, videos about our work and the launch of IES and NCES Facebook pages. We also published 80 blogs focused on our work and our mission;  
  • We launched tools, like RCT-YES and  Find What Works, that make it easier to conduct, report, and find research;
  • We awarded more than $200 million in research grants and funding across a wide variety of topics, including:
    • More than $150 million in grants from the National Center for Education Research;
    • More than $70 million in grants from the National Center for Special Education Research; and
    • About $5.75 million in funding for the development of education technology through the ED/IES Small Business Innovation Research program.

At the end of the year, we shared a small portion of our 2016 work on Twitter using the hashtag #IES2016. If you weren’t following Twitter over the holidays, we created a Storify of those tweets, which we’ve embedded below.  Also, check out the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Year in Review website for an overview of the WWC’s work in 2016.

 

 

Persistence Pays Off: Introducing the New WWC Website

By Ruth Curran Neild, Delegated Director, IES

Stick with it, teachers tell their students.  Don’t give up when the going gets tough. Important work is often difficult. Keep at it.

More than a decade ago, it took this kind of dogged determination to launch an entity that would review education research against rigorous standards—the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC).   There were some skeptics, but also many supporters. And year after year, the WWC persisted, building out new topic areas, adding systematic reviews and practice guides, and identifying more interventions with positive effects on student outcomes.

Over time, WWC standards began to influence the field, with researchers designing studies that would meet its rigorous expectations. At the same time, researchers provided input that helped us improve WWC and its standards. Now, there are about 1,000 effectiveness studies available that meet our high bar for research design.  

By 2014, there was so much content in the WWC and so many people using the WWC website that it was time to retool our online presence and make our resources easier to find.

So IES staff and WWC contractors undertook an extensive project to create a more flexible database and intuitive search engine that meets a variety of user needs. A new relational database was built from the ground up, using study review data previously kept in thousands of different spreadsheets. Focus groups and user testing allowed us to identify the most important functionalities and best design features.

After more than two years of work, we launched the new WWC website today (Sept. 13), with a much-improved Find What Works feature that makes it easier to identify interventions, programs, and policies have improved student outcomes. (The video below can help you learn how to navigate the new site). The new WWC site has something for all types of users:

Do you want just top-level information about a program’s effects?  We can give you that.

Do you want to dig into the details of a particular study, including outcome domains, population, geographic context, and implementation?  We can give you that, too.

Do you want a quick assessment of whether a study was conducted with students like yours?  Find What Works can do that.

Do you want an easy way to compare the research on interventions?  Yes, absolutely – that’s a new feature.  

Do you want to see a list of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that meet WWC standards and found at least one statistically significant positive effect?  No problem.

This is a proud day indeed for the What Works Clearinghouse, but there’s more to come.  We are always working on new resources for our users. In the next few months, look for a new practice guide on teaching writing in grades 6-12, as well as online WWC reviewer training, which we hope will help to meet the high demand for this credential. And we are continuing to expand our topic areas, including reviews of studies of postsecondary education programs to identify those that are showing promise for improving student outcomes.  

A lot of hard work and persistence went into this project from many people, including IES staff and the teams from Mathematica Policy Research and Sanametrix that worked on the site. I want to say “thank you” to them all. I also want to thank the many people who have been a part of the WWC over the years; including IES team members, study reviewers, and contractors. They have helped get us to this point today.  

Most of all, I want to thank the hundreds of thousands of educators, researchers, and decision makers who visit and use the WWC each year. We are glad that the What Works Clearinghouse has been a part of your work and hope it will continue to be a go-to resource for many years to come.