2012 National Board for Education Sciences Annual Report
Briefing Material for Board Members

NCSER’s New Initiatives for FY 2013

Early Career Development and Mentoring Program in Special Education

• IES has established the Research Training Program in Special Education: Early Career Development and Mentoring competition to address the need to support new investigators in special education and early intervention during their first years in institutions of higher education. To develop and maintain a strong cadre of researchers interested in addressing the needs of infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities, and their families and teachers, it is essential to provide a structure to assist new investigators in developing their own line of independent research. The Early Career Development and Mentoring Program is designed to fill these needs by providing new investigators support to further develop the methodological, content, and grant writing expertise needed to develop a strong line of research that includes federal funding. An important aspect of this program is the requirement that the research and training be guided closely by a scientist experienced in the study of infants, toddlers, children, or youth with or at risk for disabilities, and/or their families or teachers. The program intends to provide new investigators with protected time in their faculty positions during which they can concentrate more intensively on developing research skills and their program of research.

Accelerating the Academic Achievement of Children with Learning Disabilities

• The Accelerating the Academic Achievement of Students with Learning Disabilities Research Initiative (A3 Initiative) is intended to support research to develop and evaluate interventions (e.g., instructional approaches, curricula, technology) to accelerate the academic achievement of students with or at risk for learning disabilities in grades 3 through 8. The A3 Initiative will take a comprehensive approach to the problem of improving the academic achievement in math and reading of students with or at risk for learning disabilities who demonstrate the most intractable learning problems. The development and rigorous evaluation of interventions based on systematic experimentation and analysis of content and intervention features as well as implementation variables are required to build a science of intensive instruction to meet the academic needs of these students. In addition, IES plans for the A3 Initiative to change the way in which research on the achievement of students with disabilities is conducted, by creating a tightly linked network of researchers across a variety of disciplines who will work collaboratively to address the problem.  IES intends to make awards for not more than three A3 Centers.