Inside IES Research

Given the many challenges that this year has brought, including the difficulties and uncertainties due to the COVID-19 pandemic, IES is providing different resources and options to assist applicants as they begin preparing their applications. To ensure that program officers can focus their time on project-specific questions, applicants should review these resources first before seeking individual feedback.

First, have a copy of the documents that are needed to submit a proposal. Download a copy of the relevant request for applications (RFA) and the IES Application Submission Guide. This page has PDFs of these documents: https://ies.ed.gov/funding/21rfas.asp. Also, download the application package (search for CFDA 84.305) from https://grants.gov/. Contact Grants.gov (1-800-518-4726; support@grants.gov) if you need help with your electronic grant submission.

Next, take advantage of our digital technical assistance options.

• On-demand webinars. These pre-recorded webinars answer questions about the grant competitions, how to apply, and how to prepare a strong application. You can access them here: https://ies.ed.gov/funding/webinars/.  

• Virtual office hours. This year, we will host a series of drop-in hours during which a program officer will answer questions and give technical assistance. These office hours will help determine which competition or project type is the best fit and also understand some of the requirements and recommendations in the RFAs. Please see the schedule below along with the call-in information. This information is also posted here.

• Cost analysis/Cost-effectiveness analysis. Many RFAs require a cost analysis plan, and some also require a cost effectiveness plan.  Please refer to our list of resources for developing these plans: https://ies.ed.gov/seer/cost_analysis.asp.

• General resources for researchers: IES has a drawn together links to various resources it has sponsored on this webpage: https://ies.ed.gov/resourcesforresearchers.asp.

Finally, please make sure that you attend to the application due dates: https://ies.ed.gov/funding/futureComp.asp because IES does not accept late applications.

Virtual Office Hours

Staff from the research centers will host hour-long drop-in virtual sessions to provide technical assistance around particular competitions or research project types or for general purposes. Applicants are encouraged to join in the discussion and ask questions. These sessions are especially helpful if you are unsure of which competition or project type is the best match for you or if you are unclear on any changes to the requirements or recommendations. Below is a list of the current sessions and their topics. Please attend as many sessions as you would like.

All office hours will use the same call-in details. The program officer will allow participants into the meeting from the “lobby” at the beginning. We recommend you do not use video so that there is sufficient bandwidth. All times are shown in Eastern Standard time.

Join Microsoft Teams Meeting

+1 202-991-0393   United States, Washington DC (Toll)

Conference ID: 915 412 787#

If you would like to request accommodations (e.g., TTY), please send an email to NCER.Commissioner@ed.gov with this request as soon as possible.

You may have to download a free mobile application to use Microsoft Teams if you want the full audio and visual experience from your phone. Clicking on the linked “Join” hyperlink below should prompt you to do this. You can also refer to this article for information: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/set-up-your-teams-mobile-apps-1ba8dce3-1122-47f4-8db6-00a4f93117e8

In today’s diverse classrooms, it is both challenging and critical to gather accurate and meaningful information about student knowledge and skills. Certain populations present unique challenges in this regard – for example, English learners (ELs) often struggle on assessments delivered in English. On “typical” classroom and state assessments, it can be difficult to parse how much of an EL student’s performance stems from content knowledge, and how much from language learner status. This lack of clarity makes it harder to make informed decisions about what students need instructionally, and often results in ELs being excluded from challenging (or even typical) coursework.

Over the past several years, NCER has invested in several grants to design innovative assessments that will collect and deliver better information about what ELs know and can do across the PK-12 spectrum. This work is producing some exciting results and products.

• Jason Anthony and his colleagues at the University of South Florida have developed the School Readiness Curriculum Based Measurement System (SR-CBMS), a collection of measures for English- and Spanish-speaking 3- to 5-year-old children. Over the course of two back-to-back Measurement projects, Dr. Anthony’s team co-developed and co-normed item banks in English and Spanish in 13 different domains covering language, math, and science. The assessments are intended for a variety of uses, including screening, benchmarking, progress monitoring, and evaluation. The team used item development and evaluation procedures designed to assure that both the English and Spanish tests are sociolinguistically appropriate for both monolingual and bilingual speakers.

• Daryl Greenfield and his team at the University of Miami created Enfoque en Ciencia, a computerized-adaptive test (CAT) designed to assess Latino preschoolers’ science knowledge and skills. Enfoque en Ciencia is built on 400 Spanish-language items that cover three science content domains and eight science practices. The items were independently translated into four major Spanish dialects and reviewed by a team of bilingual experts and early childhood researchers to create a consensus translation that would be appropriate for 3 to 5 year olds. The assessment is delivered via touch screen and is equated with an English-language version of the same test, Lens on Science.

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• A University of Houston team led by David Francis is engaged in a project to study the factors that affect assessment of vocabulary knowledge among ELs in unintended ways. Using a variety of psychometric methods, this team explores data from the Word Generation Academic Vocabulary Test to identify features that affect item difficulty and explore whether these features operate similarly for current, former, as well as students who have never been classified as ELs. The team will also preview a set of test recommendations for improving the accuracy and reliability of extant vocabulary assessments.

• Researchers led by Rebecca Kopriva at the University of Wisconsin recently completed work on a set of technology-based, classroom-embedded formative assessments intended to support and encourage teachers to teach more complex math and science to ELs. The assessments use multiple methods to reduce the overall language load typically associated with challenging content in middle school math and science. The tools use auto-scoring techniques and are capable of providing immediate feedback to students and teachers in the form of specific, individualized, data-driven guidance to improve instruction for ELs.

By leveraging technology, developing new item formats and scoring models, and expanding the linguistic repertoire students may access, these teams have found ways to allow ELs – and all students – to show what really matters: their academic content knowledge and skills.

Written by Molly Faulkner-Bond (former NCER program officer).

In recent months, several federal reports and resources related to English learner (EL) learning and education related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have been released.

First, the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) released its third “data story” about ELs in US schools. This story, which builds on two previously released stories about the characteristics and educational experiences of ELs, focuses specifically on ELs’ NAEP performance and high school graduation rates. Through interactive infographics (many of which are built on data from the National Center for Education Statistics), the story shows that higher percentages of ELs are proficient in math than in reading, but that nearly half of all states experienced declines in the number of ELs who scored proficient in math between 2009 and 2017. The story also shows that graduation rates for ELs improved by 10 percentage points between 2010-11 and 2015-16 (from 57 percent to 67 percent), but still fall well below the rates for non-ELs (84 percent). While interesting and informative, the data story also underscores the necessity of research and development to produce better resources and information to support EL learning.

In that vein, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released English Learners in STEM Subjects: Transforming Classrooms, Schools, and Lives. This report examines what we know about ELs’ learning, teaching, and assessment in STEM subjects and provides guidance on how to improve STEM learning outcomes for these students. It reflects the consensus of a committee of EL experts that was chaired by NCER and NCSER grantee Dr. David Francis and included past grantees Dr. Okhee Lee and Dr. Mary Schleppegrell alongside a dozen other experts in EL education, STEM education, and teaching. One of the report’s central conclusions is that ELs develop proficiency in both STEM subjects and language when their classroom teachers provide them with opportunities for meaningful interaction and actively support both content and language learning. Given that many STEM teachers do not receive preparation to teach in this way, the report provides several recommendations to improve pre-service and in-service training. It also includes recommendations for how developers and publishers might produce better instructional materials and assessments to help both teachers and EL students. 

Efforts of both types – instructional preparation and development of new materials – may be further supported by two new toolkits released by the Office of Education Technology. The toolkits are designed for educators and developers, and each is organized around five specific guiding principles to help the targeted group approach education technology with ELs’ unique needs in mind. The principles for developers emphasize the importance of thinking ahead about EL needs for those who wish to make products for this population. Meanwhile, the educator principles center on issues of awareness, and encourage teachers to learn more about the features, platforms, and resources that are available for ELs in the world of education technology. The principles also complement one another – for example, developers are encouraged to offer instruction-focused professional development, and educators are encouraged to seek out the same.

Brought together, these resources provide a snapshot of ELs’ mathematics achievement, a summary of research evidence about learning and instruction for ELs in STEM, and a set of principles to guide instruction and development efforts in the technology space moving forward. They also make a clear case for continued investment in R&D efforts to support STEM learning for both EL students and their teachers. Since 2010, the National Center for Education Research has invested nearly $20 million across 13 research and researcher-practioner partnership grants that have focused on STEM learning and ELs. Several such grants are coming to a close in the 2019 fiscal year; watch this space for future blog posts about the products and findings from these projects.

English learners (ELs) can be a tricky student population to study. In some ways, these students who are learning English as part of their education are a homogenous population. For example, more than 75% of them speak Spanish, and more than half of the nation's 4.8 million EL students  are concentrated in grades K – 3. On the other hand, EL education can be very context-driven. For example, districts and states vary considerably both in the composition of their particular EL population, and in the specific policies, assessments, and instructional supports they use to guide ELs’ education.

In response to this latter point, some NCER grantees have figured out that one good way to study and support EL education is by working in close partnership with a specific education agency. In other words, don’t fight the place-based nature of EL education – rather, use it as an asset to make your research even more relevant.

There are several examples of IES-funded projects that have successfully worked using this approach. The most obvious are eight Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships we have funded that explicitly focused on ELs. These projects have tackled a range of EL-related issues including science education and trajectories through middle and high school, and have taken place in states like Utah and Oregon, and districts like Saint Paul, MN and Cleveland, OH. As intended for RPP projects, these partners have leveraged their mutual interests to complete rigorous analyses and create products with immediate value for practitioners (read more about one example here).

Partnerships and collaborations are not limited to the RPP competition, however. Some EL researchers have found ways to collaborate closely with agency partners even in the context of a more “typical” research project. One example of this is work done by Peggy Estrada with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Dr. Estrada’s Goal 1 grant focused on longitudinal patterns in EL performance before and after reclassification, or the point at which a student is deemed to no longer need the services and supports associated with EL status.

In LAUSD, reclassification decisions were made based on three criteria, and Dr. Estrada found that many students who are not reclassified miss only one of the three. She also observed that there are only eight different profiles that can describe a student’s status on the three criteria. She reasoned, further, that if teachers knew a student’s profile, they could tailor their supports to help the student meet the criterion on which he or she fell short.

To share these findings with LAUSD, Dr. Estrada created a number of actionable data visualization tools. These proved key in what happened next: LAUSD staff members Kathy Hayes and Hilda Maldonado immediately saw the value in Dr. Estrada’s findings and visualizations, and worked with their colleagues to create an English Learner Dashboard that incorporated both. The Dashboard is an interactive data tool that provides summary information about student reclassification profiles and allows staff to design reports tailored to their needs. LAUSD staff can download the names of students in each profile and generate reports with student names and detailed assessment results for each reclassification criteria.

Creation of this Dashboard is another great example of the value created through collaborations between researchers and practitioners – particularly for EL research. LAUSD staff cited the value of working with an external partner who provided objectivity and helped them to think more critically and deeply about an issue they found important. Dr. Estrada found that working with LAUSD enhanced both the validity and the utility of her research. In the end, both parties win – as do, more importantly, the EL students themselves.

Written by Molly Faulkner-Bond, Program Officer, NCER and Karen Douglas, former Program Officer, NCER

The Institute of Education Sciences funds and supports Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships (RPP) that address significant challenges in education. In this guest blog post, Karen D. Thompson, of Oregon State University and Josh Rew, Martha Martinez, and Chelsea Clinton, of the Oregon Department of Education, describe the work their RPP is doing to better understand and improve the performance English learners in Oregon. Click here to learn more about RPP grants. This research will be part of a Regional Educational Laboratory webinar on June 21.

According to the most recent data, about 10 percent of K-12 students in U.S. public schools were classified as English learners (EL). But that only tells part of the story: a large proportion of students in U.S. schools are former ELs, who have attained proficiency in English and “exited” EL services. Currently, in most states and the nation, we do not know the size of the former EL group because states have only been required to monitor this group of students for a limited amount of time.

Education agencies and the media routinely report the achievement gap between current EL students and their non-EL peers. However, analyzing outcomes only for current EL students does not provide a complete picture of how well schools are serving the full group of students who entered school not yet proficient in English. We refer to this full group, which includes both current and former ELs, as Ever English Learners (Ever ELs).

Through our IES-funded partnership, the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) and Oregon State University (OSU) has identified the full group of both current and former ELs in Oregon public K-12 schools. Using 2015-16 Oregon data, we looked at the proportion of Ever ELs who are current and former ELs at each grade level. As seen in Figure 1 below, former ELs outnumber current ELs in grades 6 and above, with the relative size of the former EL population increasing at each grade level.

Figure 1

Starting with the 2012-13 school year, ODE began annually reporting to the public the outcomes of Ever ELs (e.g., achievement and growth, chronic absenteeism, rates of freshmen on-track, and graduation rates). These annual reports include school and district report cards, the statewide report card, and technical reports corresponding to specific state initiatives, such as graduation rates, chronic absenteeism, assessment participation, and district EL accountability. 

In the past, states have typically reported achievement outcomes for students currently classified as ELs and compared these to outcomes for all students not currently classified as ELs. Under this reporting scheme, the non-EL subgroup consists of students never classified as ELs and former ELs.  With this grouping (Figure 2), graduation rates for ELs appear much lower than graduation rates for non-ELs (52.9 percent for ELs compared to 75.8 percent for non-ELs).           

However, it may be more appropriate in some situations to instead analyze outcomes for the full group of students who entered school as ELs (Figure 3). Under this alternative reporting scheme, if we combine outcomes for both current and former ELs to create the Ever EL group, we see that graduation rates for Ever ELs are much closer to graduation rates for students never classified as ELs (71.1 percent for Ever ELs compared to 75.6 percent for Never ELs).

While the low graduation rates for current ELs are certainly concerning, it is also important to know that former ELs are graduating at rates slightly higher than students never classified as ELs (77.9 percent vs. 75.6 percent, respectively), as shown in Figure 4.

This is particularly noteworthy since former ELs represent a larger proportion of the student population than current ELs at the secondary level.

In addition to annual reporting, the ODE began using data for Ever ELs in 2015-16 to identify districts in need of support, assistance, and improvement, as required by state law.  The state’s accountability system identifies the districts with the highest needs and lowest outcomes as measured by demographic indicators (such as economically disadvantage, migrant or homeless status) and outcome data (e.g., growth, graduation, and post-secondary enrollment) for Ever ELs. Identified districts conduct a needs assessment, identify evidence-based and culturally responsive technical assistance, develop a technical assistance implementation plan, monitor progress, and review outcomes and make necessary adjustments. Along with its applications for reporting and accountability, we have used the Ever EL framework to analyze special education disproportionality, documenting implications for research, policy, and practice.

To learn more about how education agencies are using the Ever EL category, join us and colleagues from New York City for a June 21 webinar, sponsored by Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands.