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.