Inside IES Research

Notes from NCER & NCSER

Save the Date: Leveraging Evidence to Accelerate Recovery Nationwide (LEARN) Network Launch Event

Join us on January 19, 2023, from 3pm EST-4:30pm EST, as members of the IES-funded LEARN (Leveraging Evidence to Accelerate Recovery Nationwide) Network convene publicly for the first time to share their network's goals and vision. Learn more from the network teams during this virtual event

and hear from IES Director Mark Schneider about his hopes for the LEARN Network in the coming years as IES looks to the future with a focus on progress, purpose, and performance.

The LEARN Network was established to focus on adapting and preparing to scale existing, evidence-based products to address learning acceleration and recovery for students in K-12, particularly for students from underrepresented groups disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to generating solutions to the nation’s most pressing challenges to COVID-19 recovery within the education sector, IES expects that the combined efforts of this network will lead to the establishment of best practices for how to prepare to effectively scale evidence-based products.

The LEARN Network includes a scaling lead and four product teams. The scaling lead, led by a team at SRI International, is facilitating training, coaching, and collaboration activities with product teams; ensuring educator needs and perspectives are addressed; and providing a model for the field that ensures evidence-based products are developed with the potential to achieve impact at scale for students—particularly those in most need—from the start. Product teams are focused on preparing to scale literacy products for students in K-3 (Targeted Reading Instruction; Grantee: University of Florida), 4th-5th grade (Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies; Grantee: AIR), and middle school (Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention; Grantee: SERP) as well as a math product for students in 5th grade (Classwide Fraction Intervention combined with Math Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies; Grantee: AIR).

Registration is now open, and we hope to see you there! For more information on the event and to register, visit https://learntoscale.org/

Grateful for Our Interns: The 2022-23 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Interns

In honor of Thanksgiving, NCER and NCSER would like to express their gratitude to all of the student volunteer interns that are giving their time and talents to help us understand and communicate about education research. In our third blog about these interns, we are highlighting our diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) interns. These interns come to us through the Virtual Student Federal Service program and are being mentored by Katina Stapleton (NCER).

Audrey Im (she/her)

I am from the Bay Area in California and am currently a UCLA undergraduate majoring in political science and minoring in professional writing and film. Ever since I was young, my dream profession was to be a teacher—the process of sharing knowledge with other people is thrilling for me. I was lucky enough to have great teachers with distinct, effective teaching styles, and I knew that somewhere along the road, I wanted to have the same effect on another generation of students as those teachers had on me. Currently, I am focused on learning how to write in a manner that makes information accessible.

Fun Fact: I love writing poetry! Recently, I've been doing a monthly poetry project where I write a poem using only song lyrics from my favorite tunes of the month. It's been very fun and challenging. I would highly recommend trying it out!

 

Zaakirah Rahman

I’m currently a senior at the City College of New York pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English education and a minor in sociology. I was born and raised in Queens, so I’ve been a part of the New York City school system for as long as I can remember. This has helped fuel my passion for pursuing education as a career. School has contributed a lot to my life, from teaching me what I know to even being a second home at times. I’d like to give back through being in the classroom myself and enacting real change. I currently work at the New York Public Library as a page, a job that is suited to my love for reading. Additionally, I’m the outreach chair for the New York chapter of an organization called MIST (Muslim Interscholastic Tournament), where we organize an annual tournament with various competitions for high school students. The tournament itself champions helping students bring out the best in themselves, and my role helps me meet all kinds of people to share this experience.

Fun Fact: I love photography and am owner to an ever-growing collection of cameras.

 
 

Grateful for Our Interns: The 2022-23 Data Science Interns at NCER and NCSER

In preparation for Thanksgiving, NCER and NCSER would like to express their gratitude to all the student volunteer interns who are giving their time and talents to help us understand and communicate about education research. In our second blog about these interns, we are highlighting our data science interns. These interns come to us through either the Virtual Student Federal Service program or the Student Volunteer Trainee Program. The interns are working on different data science tasks, such as data visualizations, finding ways to connect publication information from different federal databases to funded NCER and NCSER projects, and helping to understand and improve internal data on research projects. Their primary mentors, Sarah Brasiel (NCSER) and Meredith Larson (NCER), are proud to introduce the team.

Megan Church

Headshot of Megan Church

I am a senior at William & Mary, pursuing a bachelor’s degree with a double major in data science and psychology. I am a lead researcher at William & Mary's School of Education, focusing on elementary students’ interactions with data. Due to my interest in education research and love of creating data visualizations, the IES data science internship seemed like the perfect fit. I hope this opportunity will give me a glimpse into the inner workings of the research branch of the U.S. Department of Education and help me decide on a future career path.

Fun Fact: I have been to seven concerts this year in six cities, three states, and two countries.

Katelyn Egan

Headshot of Katelyn Egan

I am pursuing a master’s degree in educational psychology with a concentration in learning analytics through the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I’m looking forward to applying the data science and analysis skills I have learned in my program and learning more about the research goals and initiatives of the Institute of Education Sciences. Previously, I received a Fulbright grant to work with English language learners at a vocational secondary school in Bulgaria for the 2019-20 academic year and worked as a teacher for 2 years in South Africa with the Peace Corps. I have also spent 2 years working in the educational technology industry and hope to continue using data science and analytics to serve K-12 educators and students.

Fun Fact: I play the bassoon!

Juliette Gudknecht

Headshot of Juliette Gudknecht

I am pursuing a master’s degree in the applied statistics program at Columbia University. My prior internships at NASA, the U.S. State Department, and my university were among the experiences that helped me prepare for this internship. My goal is to pursue a PhD in special education studying autism spectrum disorder in academic contexts. I applied for this internship to gain critical data analysis skills and learn about the U.S. Department of Education and IES. I hope this experience will allow me to gain the necessary skills to become a qualified researcher in quantitative studies within special education. Thank you to everyone at IES for this amazing opportunity!

Fun Fact: I have my own nonprofit for Autism advocacy!

Rikesh Patel

I am pursuing a bachelor's degree in economics with minor in data science engineering at University of California, Los Angeles. I have honed my analytical and technical skills in working with SharePoint databases in past internships, which led me to this internship. I will be working with internal data to help the research centers gain more insight into their grants and contracts. I fell in love with data years ago, and now I aspire to become a full-fledged data scientist in the future, applying Python, SQL, and other technical knowledges to do my best. One day, I want to help develop a model that helps people all over the world.

Fun Fact: I recently got into traveling. This winter, I'm planning on taking some cooking classes in Greece!

Morgan Tucker

Headshot of Morgan Tucker

I am in my final undergraduate year at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, studying international political economy and data science. I currently work as a research assistant for UT’s Innovations for Peace and Development Lab, researching the connections between government/agency responsiveness and discrimination towards citizens and am using many different packages, analytics, and visualization tools in R to do so. I previously worked under the U.S. Embassy Amman as a data management intern, where I created tutorials, researched best data management practices, and incorporated feedback to improve data collection, management, and distribution. I also used Python and SQL as a data scientist for the V&A Waterfront marketing team in South Africa, using large data sets, advanced querying, and machine learning to develop consumer profiles. Right now, my main goal is to remain sane as I reach the end of my undergraduate experience. I also hope to stay in Austin and enroll in a master’s programs this fall to further hone my programming skills and work at the intersection of data science and government. With my background in economic development and R programming, this internship opportunity was the perfect mix of both and will be an amazing way to improve my programming expertise and see what my future career may look like.

Fun Fact:  I studied abroad in Cape Town, South Africa this past summer. I learned a lot about urban economic development during my time there and can’t wait to visit again!

Grateful for Our Interns: The 2022-23 Writing and Communications Interns at NCER and NCSER

In preparation for Thanksgiving, NCER and NCSER would like to express their gratitude to all the student volunteer interns that are giving their time and talents to help us understand and communicate about education research. In our first blog about these interns, we are highlighting our writing and communications team. These interns come to NCER and NCSER through the Virtual Student Federal Service program and are contributing to different writing tasks, such as helping to revise and update our online abstracts and working on blogs for Inside IES Research | Notes from NCER & NCSER. The NCER mentors, Meredith Larson and Vinita Chhabra, and the NCSER mentor, Amy Sussman, are proud to introduce the team.

Shanna Bodenhamer

Headshot of Shanna Bodenhamer

I am currently pursuing a PhD in educational psychology with an emphasis in special education at Texas A&M University (whoop!). Prior to starting my PhD program, I taught in the public schools as a special education teacher. Other roles I have had in public schools include working as a board-certified behavior analyst providing behavioral training and support to teachers and as a program facilitator overseeing the implementation of a state-funded autism grant for an early childhood intervention program. My goals are to complete my PhD, continue conducting research, and ensure that this research makes its way into practice. I was excited to start this internship because it focuses on making research and evidence-based practices available and accessible to everyone. My hope is to close the research-to-practice gap and provide practitioners with the tools they need to provide quality services for children with disabilities.

Fun Fact: My favorite place to be when the weather is warm is on a lake, wakesurfing with my family. We're a little competitive, but it's always in good fun!  In my spare time, my hobbies are photography, reading mystery/thriller novels, and proving to my teenage daughters that I am, in fact, very cool.

Rachael Higham

Headshot of Rachael Higham

I am pursuing a master’s degree in English with a concentration in professional writing and rhetoric at Bowling Green State University. Prior to this, I worked with students to build foundational skills in reading and writing at a school focused on language-based learning differences. Through this work, I became interested in accessibility. My research examines the use of communication models in popular science and how best to create content that allows inclusive access to scientific knowledge. My goal is to transition to professional writing. I applied to this internship because I hope this opportunity will continue to help me build skills and a knowledge base for both my academic and professional goals.

Fun Fact: I am working on seeing all the national parks and took two cross country trips last year to add to the list. My favorite so far is Mt Rainier!

Rebecca Sun

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I’m currently a second-year undergraduate majoring in English at University of California, Riverside. My academic experience helped me prepare for this internship as I’ve spent a large majority of my time reading, writing, and analyzing a range of texts and sources. In addition, I’m interested in education research—I’ve done volunteer and advocacy work to support a more inclusive English language arts (ELA) curriculum in K-12 schools. My goals include further exploring my interests in English, graduate school, and publishing. Applying to this internship will help get me closer to those goals because I’ll be able to gain technical writing experience by updating abstracts, learning official writing guides, and learning more about IES. All the while, I am gaining more personal and professional guidance and opportunities from my mentors.  

Fun Fact: Aside from reading books, another one of my hobbies is listening to music. My favorite artist is Taylor Swift—I love her entire discography and her songwriting ability that captures the different human experiences and emotions. 

From the NCER Commissioner: How IES’ Investment in Literacy Is Changing Education

A cornerstone challenge in education is that too many learners in our nation can’t read well enough to succeed in their future education and employment. In addition, a disproportionate number of individuals with low literacy skills are members of underrepresented groups. Since IES’ founding in 2002, we have devoted millions of dollars to addressing this challenge, seeking to generate high-quality evidence about literacy practices that work for learners across our nation. Today, we can see how this 20-year investment focused on improving literacy has generated interventions and assessments that are transforming practices at scale and meeting the needs of learners and educators by incorporating evidence-based practices into the materials they use daily.

Since IES is an applied research agency, its mission is to provide scientific evidence on which to ground education practice and policy and to share this information in formats that are useful and accessible to educators, parents, policymakers, researchers, and the public. IES and its four centers work together to collect data on the current state of education; identify solutions and innovations through research, grant programs, and competitions; and evaluate the success of investments in order to identify solutions worthy of scaling across the nation’s education system.

The education research community is often accused of generating findings and products that sit in an attic corner unused. We aim to disrupt this perception and make it clear that our grantees’ knowledge and tools are both useful and used. Here I want to share a few examples to showcase how American tax dollars are transforming how millions of learners are learning to read.

IES Technologies and Google Classroom

In April 2022, we were excited to learn that Google had acquired the intellectual property rights for Moby.Read and SkillCheck, education technology products developed through IES programs by California-based Analytic Measures, Inc. (AMI). Google Classroom is advertised as an educators’ “all-in-one place for teaching and learning,” and many tools and apps are integrated into the system, including the IES-developed and IES-evaluated product, ASSISTments, which provides student feedback assistance and assessment data to teachers.

Moby.Read and SkillCheck are technology solutions created to provide teachers with a more efficient way to assess their students’ reading skills and provide them with individualized feedback.  These technologies were developed over two decades with IES funding, a process that included prototype development starting in 2002, followed by ED/IES Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding to test Moby.Read in 2016 and 2017 and SkillCheck in 2020 and 2021, with validation research conducted all along the way.

Since their commercial launch in 2019, Moby.Read and SkillCheck have been used for more than 30,000 student assessments in 30 states.

IES Literacy Innovations and Scholastic

In September, Scholastic announced that the A2i (Assessment to Instruction) system—a system for literacy screening, progress monitoring and assessment, and instructional planning designed for classrooms and community organizations—and the Learning Ovations team that had developed and evaluated A2i would become part of its education solutions group. A2i provides educators with a system that enables them to deliver individualized reading. IES has invested in developing and evaluating this system since 2003, generating evidence of its effectiveness in improving young learners’ reading skills and comprehension. In 2020, we interviewed the creators of this system, who told the story of how their evidence-based system was prepared to scale. The system will continue to evolve so that it can serve all learners in our nation: IES is currently supporting the expansion of this system and its assessments for use with English learners.

A2i will help enhance Scholastic’s literacy platform, which integrates literacy screening, progress monitoring and assessment, instructional planning, and professional learning with their books and e-books, print- and technology-based learning programs, and other products that support children’s learning and literacy. With this acquisition, the IES-supported A2i system will have the opportunity to reach the 115,000 schools in the Scholastic community, potentially helping 3.8 million educators, 54 million students, and 78 million parents/caregivers in the United States.

Improving Literacy Outcomes Through Assessment

Teaching students how to read depends upon knowing what learners do and do not know. The acquisition of Moby.Read and SkillCheck highlights the recognition of that need by Google but is only one example of the IES commitment to developing and validating literacy assessments. While the two examples described above have the potential to touch many millions of learners, we have also invested in many other literacy assessments that are being widely used.

For example, since 2014, more than 2.5 million 3rd to 12th grade learners have been evaluated through a reading diagnostic system developed with IES funding: the Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading Aligned to Florida Standards. Another diagnostic tool for 3rd to 12th graders, available nationally via the Educational Testing Service (ETS), is Capti Assess with ETS® ReadBasix™. This diagnostic assessment system was developed and validated with funding from both NCER and ED/IES SBIR.

Educators in more than 13,000 U.S. schools rely on myIGDIs (currently distributed via Renaissance Learning) to evaluate the needs of their preschool learners. These individual growth and development indicators (IGDIs) are brief, easy-to-use measures of early language and literacy designed for use with preschool children. The development and validation of these measures have been (and are being) supported by multiple IES projects. Their current work seeks to expand the IGDIs for use with young Spanish-speaking and Hmong-speaking learners.

Scaling Evidence-Based Innovations to Accelerate Literacy Learning After COVID

Launched with funding from the American Rescue Plan, the Leveraging Evidence to Accelerate Recovery Nationwide Network (the LEARN Network) is adapting and preparing to scale existing, evidence-based products to assess students whose learning was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. IES has made four awards to product teams and one to a scaling lead, and these five teams will establish the LEARN Network together.

In addition to the LEARN Network’s generating of solutions to the nation’s most pressing challenges to COVID-19 recovery within the education sector, IES expects that the combined efforts of this network will lead to the establishment of best practices for the field for how to prepare to scale evidence-based products effectively.

Three of the four product teams are focused on preparing to scale literacy products developed and tested with prior IES funding. These innovations are designed for students in grades K–3 (Targeted Reading Instruction), fourth and fifth grades (Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies), and middle school (Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention). The projects will work with students and teachers in elementary schools in Florida and North Carolina, in fourth grade classrooms in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, and in urban middle schools in the District of Columbia.

As I reflect on 20 years of investment in rigorous and relevant literacy research, I am hopeful. Our investment is transforming what we know and improving how that knowledge is being translated to ensure that every learner in our nation can read at or above grade level.

With our newest investment in supporting the systematic scaling of evidence-based practices, I believe that our educators and learners will have access to tools that support their needs for the next 20 years and beyond.

Elizabeth Albro (elizabeth.albro@ed.gov) is the commissioner of the National Center for Education Research.