Major IES Updates

A. Organization, Staffing, and Budget

IES has a full-time staff complement of about 185 and has been appropriated approximately $557 million in annual expenditures for 2007 external grants and contracts through seven budget line items:

1. research, development, and dissemination;
2. statistics;
3. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP);
4. statewide longitudinal data systems;
5. special education research;
6. special education studies and evaluations; and
7. regional education labs

and through evaluation and national activity set-asides in the budgets of other U.S. Department of Education programs.

B. Communication and Outreach

• Web-based Dissemination
  Based on the most recent information available, IES's website now exceeds 18 million page views per month. IES accounts for about one-third of the web traffic of the entire U.S. Department of Education and substantially more traffic than popular sites such as that of the U.S. Census Bureau.
• What Works Clearinghouse
  In July 2007, IES awarded a 5-year contract to Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., of Princeton, NJ, for operation and expansion of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). The WWC provides educators, policymakers, researchers, and the public with a central and trustworthy source of scientific evidence of what works in education through high-quality reviews of programs, products, practices, and policies intended to improve student outcomes.

  From August 2006 through July 2007, the What Works Clearinghouse produced and released 81 Intervention Reports across the topics of beginning reading, character education, dropout prevention, early childhood education, English language learning, and elementary and middle school mathematics. Of these 81 interventions, the WWC determined that 61 demonstrated positive or potentially positive effects in at least one outcome domain related to student achievement. The Clearinghouse also produced and released six Topic Reports on elementary and middle school math, English language learning, beginning reading, dropout prevention and character education. The topic reports summarize the findings across all intervention reports within a topic area.

  Example of a program found to have positive effects in the WWC
  Check and Connect. This is a dropout-prevention program for at-risk high school students that assigns them a "monitor" (e.g., graduate student) who serves as a year-round mentor and service coordinator. This program has been shown to be highly effective in two well-designed trials, producing a 40 percent increase in students staying enrolled in or graduating from high school 4 years later, compared to the control group.

• Annual Research Conference
  In June 2007, IES held its second conference of what is expected to be a series of annual research conferences. More than 700 people attended the conference, which showcased the wide range of research activities supported by IES and brought together education researchers from around the country. Researchers turned out from more than 100 colleges and universities and nearly 80 companies and research organizations.
• Urban Education Research Task Force
  In October 2006, IES announced the formation of a 15-member task force charged with advising IES on issues related to the nation's largest public school districts. Task force duties include making recommendations of areas of research and data collections that are not covered through existing programs; helping IES leaders think about the design of large, cross-district research projects; and identifying and supporting greater collaboration between the research community and urban educators.
• Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness
  IES has made a competitive grant to support the formation of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE). SREE was formed to provide a home for researchers who have a commitment to using the procedural norms of science to investigate questions of cause and effect critical for effective educational practice.

C. IES Centers

IES Centers' highlights, as outlined in its Director's Biennial Report to Congress, Toward a Learning Society (May 2007):

Twenty-four large evaluation studies are under way in the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE). NCEE's What Works Clearinghouse and redesigned ERIC digital research library are both thriving, with ERIC receiving 62 million separate searches in 2006.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) awarded grants to 14 states to create or enhance statewide longitudinal data systems. NCES drew national attention to several reports, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress remained the "gold standard" of educational testing.

IES's newest Center, the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER), devoted considerable energy to organizing, staffing, and putting the mechanisms in place to carry out its responsibilities. Last year, NCSER conducted grant competitions on 12 different research topics that produced 252 applications and resulted in 28 grants.

The National Center for Education Research (NCER) experienced a large increase in the number of competitions and the number of applications received. In 2006, 94 percent of funded grant applications received a score of excellent from review panels.

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