Inside IES Research

The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is delighted to announce the establishment of a new National Research and Development (R&D) Center on Improving Outcomes in Elementary Science Education. Both the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and IES are equally sharing the investment, with each contributing 50% of the total investment of $15 million.

Delivery of comprehensive, multidimensional science education across K-12 is a national challenge, requiring teaching and learning approaches that emphasize a deep understanding of core science topics, cross-cutting concepts, and scientific practices to answer pertinent questions and construct important scientific explanations. There is also a critical need for the development and validation of high-quality measures of elementary science achievement. The Center for Advancing Elementary Science through Assessment, Research, and Technology (CAESART) will address these needs.

A focus on elementary science increases opportunities to develop learners’ early pathways to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning and careers, particularly among populations historically underrepresented in the STEM workforce, and to develop a well-informed citizenry. 

Through partnerships among STEM researchers, leaders, and practitioners at the state, district, and school level, CAESART will generate timely evidence on how to measure elementary student science learning and evaluate the efficacy of high-quality integrated science and literacy curricula to improve student science outcomes over time. The Center’s approach will include, but is not limited to:

• a landscape analysis of existing elementary science assessments,
• the development, testing, and validation of a set of technology-based assessments that utilize adaptive and game-based structures, and
• an evaluation of the impact of an integrated science curriculum on science learning using the developed assessments. 

“This new partnership with NSF goes beyond building much-needed evidence about science assessment and learning,” said acting IES director Matthew Soldner. “It reflects our shared commitment to improving student achievement in STEM, leveraging NSF’s unique role in supporting the development of high-quality programs and products and IES’s expertise in identifying what works, for whom, and under what conditions.”

CAESART will also provide national leadership in building capacity for rigorous science assessment, sharing resources, and offering workshops and mentoring for researchers, as well as collaborating with critical stakeholders to disseminate findings. CAESART will recruit participants nationally, with concentrations in Miami, Los Angeles, and the Northeast region of the country to increase generalizability across student populations. 

This Center is supported through a cooperative agreement to provide enhanced support with IES and NSF and to advance research and national leadership on effective elementary science education.

“By partnering with IES to support CAESART, NSF’s Directorate for STEM Education (EDU) is able to not only leverage its human and financial resources but also expand its investments in critical research and assessment methods that will transform early science education at its foundation for our youngest learners, ” said NSF assistant director for STEM Education, James L. Moore III. “It will allow researchers, in collaboration with science educators and students, to develop innovative curricular, tools, and approaches that will improve science instruction while ensuring that students across the nation have access to high-quality, learning experiences. My colleagues in EDU are looking forward to seeing the immediate and long-term impact the center will have in early science education across the nation and beyond.”

This blog was written by Christina Chhin (Christina.Chhin@ed.gov), Program Officer, NCER, and Laura Namy (Laura.Namy@ed.gov), Associate Commissioner, NCER.

IES announces a new National Research and Development (R&D) Center focusing on K-12 teacher recruitment and retention policy: the Center for Longitudinal Data in Education Research - Teacher Recruitment & Retention (CALDER-R&R). Shortages in the K-12 classroom teacher workforce are a longstanding problem and have worsened in recent years. The School Pulse Panel results indicate 44 percent of public schools reported having one or more vacant teaching positions during the fall of 2022, with greater rates in high-poverty communities (57 percent high-poverty versus 41 percent low-poverty) and in schools with higher minority populations (60 percent high-minority versus 32 percent low-minority). The overwhelming majority of schools attribute difficulties to filling vacancies to too few applicants. This Center will examine policies addressing teacher shortages and their impact on teachers, student learning, and equity. The policies address a range of shortage areas and operate at multiple stages of the teacher pipeline.

Specifically, the Center team will focus on the following policies:

• Grow-your-own initiatives designed to address teacher shortages and increase teacher diversity in high-needs districts
• Financial support to teacher candidates in exchange for work commitments
• Labor market information to teacher candidates intended to influence their decisions about specialization and job searching
• Licensure reforms that provide temporary licensure, change the cut scores required to pass licensure tests, or both
• Financial incentives, including salary floor policies, pay-for-performance policies, and financial incentives targeted to teachers in low-income schools and in specific shortage subject areas
• Teacher working conditions, including the 4-day school week, advanced teaching roles, and working conditions negotiated in collective bargaining agreements

To study these policies, the Center team will be using data from the following states: Arkansas, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington. In addition, the Center team will be using data from school districts in the Atlanta, GA metro area as well as Houston, TX.

Researchers will use state longitudinal data systems and analytic approaches to estimate causal impacts. The Center will evaluate fidelity of implementation, explore how intended policies were translated into practice, and identify key contextual factors that may influence the generalizability of the results. The Center will document the costs and cost effectiveness of these policies. Via a survey of a nationally representative sample of teachers, the Center will seek to understand how the interventions are viewed outside the study settings and to understand how teachers view trade-offs associated with different interventions. Through its leadership and outreach activities, the Center will build on existing stakeholder networks to disseminate findings and inform next steps to improve research, practice, and policy around K-12 teacher recruitment and retention.

This new R&D Center was awarded as a cooperative agreement with IES. IES is looking forward to working with the new Center to advance education research, policy, and practice in this key education issue that faces our nation.

Map of Center for Longitudinal Data in Education Research - Teacher Recruitment & Retention (CALDER-R&R) Partner States

This blog was written by Wai-Ying Chow (Wai-Ying.Chow@ed.gov), program officer, NCER.

IES is pleased to announce the National Education Research and Development Center for Improving Rural Postsecondary Education. This Center will be the first rural R&D center to focus on improving access to postsecondary education and completion of postsecondary degrees and credentials for students from rural K-12 districts and locales. Center researchers will disaggregate findings about rural students to better understand variation by student subgroups including racial/ethnic groupings, levels of family income, and genders. Through this investment, IES will support research useful to leaders and staff in rural districts and high schools, administrators and practitioners at rural-serving colleges and universities, and state-level administrators and policymakers concerned with extending postsecondary opportunities to rural students.

This investment continues IES’s prior and ongoing investments in rural R&D centers which started in 2004 with the National Research Center on Rural Education Support (NCRES), and continued in 2009 with The National Center for Research on Rural Education. IES currently supports two rural R&D Centers: The National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN), and The National Center for Rural School Mental Health (NCRSMH): Enhancing the Capacity of Rural Schools to Identify, Prevent, and Intervene in Youth Mental Health Concerns. Specifically, this new Center expands on the work of NCRES, which explored the factors that influence postsecondary aspirations for rural African American, Latinx, and Native American high school students. One of the new Center’s eight studies will conduct a representative survey of rural students in three states to assess their postsecondary aspirations and choices.

The new rural Center plans an expansive research agenda that includes a national landscape study of rural students’ postsecondary enrollment and factors that contribute to their postsecondary success, drawing on National Center for Education Statistics data including district-level data collected through the Common Core of Data program and nationally-representative student-level data collected through the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009. Six additional studies conducted across 10 states focus on rural students and the programs that support them in their transitions to and through college. In addition to the descriptive study of rural students aspirations mentioned above, five studies assess specific strategies for improving postsecondary access and success including dual enrollment programs for rural high school students, community-based organizations that encourage and facilitate college enrollment, supportive high school and postsecondary environments for African American students, the comprehensive Montana 10 student support program, and a train-in-place program for rural nursing students.

The Center will carry out a robust program of national leadership and dissemination. Leadership activities will include building the capacity of state agencies, rural-located practitioners, and early-career researchers to conduct research on rural students and rural-serving colleges and universities. Representatives from six state commissions and college systems, and advisory panels of external researchers and practitioners from across the country will guide the Center’s research. Five national organizations that partner with postsecondary institutions and advocate for student needs will assist the Center with disseminating its findings to broad audiences of policymakers, administrators, and practitioners that serve rural students and districts. At the conclusion of its work, the Center will publish a synthesis of its research findings and share it widely.

Map of Rural Postsecondary Education R&D Center Focus States

This blog was written by James Benson (James.Benson@ed.gov), program officer, NCER. 

The NAEP science assessment measures science knowledge and ability to engage in scientific inquiry and conduct scientific investigations. According to results from the 2019 NAEP science assessment, only one-third of grade 4 and grade 8 students, and less than one-quarter of grade 12 students scored at or above proficient. In addition, for grade 4 middle-performing and low-performing students, their science performance showed declines from 2015. While IES has a history of investing in high quality science education research to improve science teaching and learning, these data suggest that much more work is needed.

To that end, during the 2022-23 school year, IES held two Learning Acceleration Challenges designed to incentivize innovation to significantly improve learner outcomes in math and science. Under the Challenge for the Science Prize, IES sought interventions to significantly improve science outcomes for middle school students with low performance in science. Unfortunately, the judging panel for the Challenge did not recommend any finalists for the Science Prize (more information about the Math Prize results can be found here). IES recognized this Challenge was an ambitious and rapid effort to improve science achievement. Feedback from potential Science Prize entrants indicated that the rapid cycle for evaluating the intervention along with the lack of resources to implement the intervention were barriers to this competition.

With the knowledge gained from the Science Prize, IES is continuing to design opportunities that encourage transformative, innovative change to improve teaching and learning in science. In our newest opportunity, the National Center for Education Research (NCER) at IES, in partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF), released a Request for Applications for a National Research and Development Center (R&D Center) on Improving Outcomes in Elementary Science Education. Results from the most recent NAEP science assessment and the lessons learned from the Science Prize suggest opportunities for improving teaching and learning in science education need to begin early in education, and more resources are needed to conduct high quality research in science education. Through this R&D Center, IES and NSF will provide greater resources (grant award of up to $15 million over 5 years) to tackle persistent challenges in elementary science education, including the measurement of elementary science learning outcomes, and generating evidence of the impact of elementary science interventions on learner’s science achievement. In doing so, the new Elementary Science R&D Center will provide national leadership on elementary science education and build capacity in conducting high-quality science education research.

This blog was written by NCER program officer, Christina Chhin. For more information about the Elementary Science R&D Center competition, contact NCER program officers, Jennifer Schellinger or Christina Chhin, take a look at the 84.305C RFA, and/or attend one of our virtual office hours.

This year, Inside IES Research is featuring a diverse group of IES-funded education researchers and fellows that are making significant contributions to education research, policy, and practice. In recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month, we interviewed Dr. Aída Walqui, director of the IES-funded National Research & Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners at WestEd about her career journey and language equity for minoritized populations.

How have your background and experiences shaped your scholarship and career?

My background has been a tremendous influence. I was born in Lima, Peru, and grew up the first child of a modest, hard-working, politically involved, and well-educated family. From very early on, issues of language, education, and discrimination—and the way in which diverse groups were perceived—have been central in my life.

My father was born in the Peruvian jungle, and he grew up in Lima speaking Spanish. Through family conversations at the dinner table and other experiences, I became aware that Peruvian society was deeply segregated by ethnic and linguistic boundaries. For example, as a little girl, I did not understand why it was good for me to study German in a German school, where my emergent German was viewed as wonderful, and not something that negatively impacted my first language, Spanish. . . while the children in the Highlands, where we vacationed, were admonished for speaking Quechua, their native language. Their native language was considered almost an illness that needed to be eradicated, and their emergent Spanish was derided as imperfect.

Although my parents were not linguists, they explained that the language was just an excuse—the real issues were political, social, and economic control. I realized that the children who spoke Quechua were just as talented. But for them, learning Spanish was mandatory. Society saw it as the only thing to be proud of. My father also helped me understand that language was not just used for purposes of communication, but also to classify or package people—which impedes learning who people are as individuals. And that the experience of education itself had a lot to do with this.

Overall, I have had an immensely rich intellectual life. I owe my family, my late husband, and colleagues around the world for making it possible for me to live and work in many contexts, including working in Andean intercultural, bilingual education, teaching Spanish as a second language for the Peruvian Ministry of Education, teaching in Alisal High School in Salinas, CA for six intense and rewarding years, as well as living and working in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. I’ve noticed the same patterns in all these places. The languages are different, but the patterns are the same: the dismissal of populations that had been minoritized due to language issues, the enormous contribution language minority populations play in these nations, and that additional languages are assets that help you learn.

I’ve become even more determined upon realizing the incredible potential that people have. As a Latina in the United States, I have focused on developing the incredible resource of Spanish that Latinos have, while also developing English at the same level of proficiency.

Success depends on educators and those who support them envisioning the richness of these people, and by extension the richness they can provide to society. It is only looking at the seeds of time that I can say that change is possible. While sociolinguistic discrimination still exists in Peru, tremendous positive changes have also occurred. In the United States, we have similarly made strides, but still have a long way to go. In education, it is important to follow Gramsci’s old advice: pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.

In your area of research, what do you see as the greatest research needs or recommendations to address diversity, equity, and inclusion and to improve the relevance of education research for diverse communities of students and families?

We must coherently put together examples of what is possible. For example, our Center colleagues are working on policy levers such as how to integrate English learner development with subject matter courses to strengthen the education of English learners.

In the classroom, in the past, we have been singularly worried about how well English learners are using language, how to construct grammatical sentences, how to make those sentences correct, and so forth. In reality, the focus needs to be on multiple learning modalities as well as the subject matter, critical understanding, and the ability to express ideas—language—related to the content. That is, multiple forms of learning all matter in the moment, not just one.

We all need to know how to use language well, but we also need to simultaneously learn the content and critical thinking that language brings to life, not just grammatical labels or how you conjugate verbs.

What advice would you give to emerging scholars from underrepresented, minoritized groups that are pursuing a career in education research?

I would say that above all, it is essential for emerging scholars from minoritized groups to know what about education research or development is specifically important to them, and how they intend to contribute to their field, to society, and to the improvement of the groups they represent.

Knowing where your passion resides brings more than just constant direction to scholarly efforts. During difficult moments, it will sustain those efforts. Embrace educational causes you care for, even if they don’t always seem important or popular. Think through them, research them, and communicate them, time and time again, in increasingly more potent ways.

Finally, it is essential to cultivate critical dialogue with colleagues to re-examine ideas, advance proposals, and gain sight into how synergetic efforts can advance the societal educational impact of immensely talented but minoritized groups.

Dr. Aída Walqui directs the National Research and Development Center for Improving the Education of English Learners in Secondary Schools at WestEd where she started and developed one of its signature programs, the Quality Teaching for English Learners (QTEL) initiative. QTEL focuses on the development of the expertise of teachers and educational leaders to support elementary and secondary English Learners’ conceptual, analytic, and language practices in disciplinary subject matter areas. Her main area of interest and research is teacher expertise in multilingual academic contexts and how to promote its growth across the continuum of teacher professional development. In 2016 on the 50th anniversary of the International TESOL Association Dr. Walqui was selected as one of the 50 most influential researchers in the last 50 years in the field of English Language teaching.

This blog post was produced by Helyn Kim (Helyn.Kim@ed.gov), program officer for the English Learner Portfolio at NCER.