II. Institute Research Priorities

A. Background

ESRA 2002 requires that the Director of the Institute propose to the Board long-term research priorities for the Institute, and that upon approval of such priorities, the Director make the Institute's plan for addressing such priorities available for public comment.

B. Development and Approval of the Priorities

In July 2005, Dr. Grover "Russ" Whitehurst, Director of the Institute, developed a proposed set of priorities and published these in the Federal Register to solicit public comment. Over the summer, the Board prepared an analysis of the public comments, and shared it with Institute senior staff. Dr. Whitehurst considered the Board's analysis and the public comments and modified his proposed draft.

During the September 2005 Board meeting, following review and discussion of the revised statement of priorities, the Board approved the Institute priorities. Dr. Whitehurst summarized the overview, goals and targets of the final Institute research priorities in the following way (the entire text can be found in Attachment A):

Overview of Institute Research Priorities

• By providing an independent, scientific base of evidence and promoting and enabling its use, the Institute aims to further the transformation of education into an evidence-based field, and thereby enable the nation to educate all of its students effectively.
• In pursuit of its goals, the Institute will support research, conduct evaluations, and compile statistics in education that conform to rigorous scientific standards, and will disseminate and promote the use of research in ways that are objective, free of bias in their interpretation, and readily accessible.

Goals

• To develop or identify a substantial number of programs, practices, policies, and approaches that enhance academic achievement and that can be widely deployed;
• To identify what does not work and what is problematic or inefficient, and thereby encourage innovation and further research;
• To gain fundamental understanding of the processes that underlie variations in the effectiveness of education programs, practices, policies, and approaches; and
• To develop delivery systems for the results of education research that will be routinely used by policymakers, educators, and the general public when making education decisions.

What and Who

The Institute's over-arching priority is to support research that contributes to improved academic achievement for all students, particularly for those students whose education prospects are hindered by inadequate education services and conditions associated with poverty, race/ethnicity, limited English proficiency, disability, and family circumstance.

C. Board's Assessment of the Effectiveness of the Institute in Developing Its Priorities

The Institute did an excellent job developing its research priorities. The draft prepared for public comment was a sound document, reflecting the Institute's current work. It was more focused than many of the previously developed priority statements. That said, the public and Board comments concentrated on important new areas such as special education and the use of research. The Director and the Institute were appropriately responsive to the comments, and the final draft provides a strong long-term guide.

D. Plan to Address the Priorities

The priorities are a strategic statement for goals and areas of intent but by design they are not a strategic plan. Therefore, once the Board had approved the priorities, the Director set about developing a plan to address the priorities. Logically, the research that the Institute has funded to date is consistent with the Director's priorities. However, because these priorities are intended to guide work over the long term, this plan shows how the Institute will ensure that future work is strategically driven and that gaps are identified and filled. The Institute's primary mechanism for acting on the priorities is through research competitions to which researchers and research organizations can apply for funding. These competitions are organized by topic (e.g., reading and writing), and by center within the Institute (e.g., the National Center for Special Education Research). The plan explains how this mechanism will be used to oversee adherence to the priorities and take corrective action as necessary.

The plan has three components: opportunities for researchers, mix of grant applications, yield of grants. Each component involves an assessment of current activities to determine if action is necessary, and where necessary, to create new research activities or modify existing activities in order for the Institute's portfolio of activities to cover the priorities.

Opportunities for Researchers

The first component involves assessing whether the Institute is providing opportunities for researchers to obtain funding for work on each of the topics identified in the priorities. For example, is the Institute providing funding opportunities for research on the effects of curriculum and instruction on outcomes in mathematics and science outcomes for students in grade K-12? If such an assessment revealed a gap in the topics being funded, the corrective action would be to create new funding opportunities.

The number of topics covered in the competitions has increased each year, and numbered 20 for the 2006 fiscal year. As an example of the topic areas, the table below presents the number of grants awarded by topic area in 2006. ¹

Topic Areas 2006	Number of Grants
Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems	14
Cognition and Student Learning	10
Reading and Writing	7
Serious Behavior Disorders	7
Early Intervention	7
Mathematics	6
Research and Development Centers	4
Post-Doctoral Fellowships	4
NAEP Secondary Analysis	3
Language Development	3
Finance, Leadership, and Management	2
Teacher Quality	2
Total	69

Mix of Grant Applications

The second component involves assessing whether the mix of grant applications within each topic is appropriate to the Institute's goals of determining what works and does not work, and understanding the processes that underlie variations in program effectiveness. For example, with respect to the effects of curriculum and instruction on mathematics and science outcomes, is there sufficient upstream work to generate a new generation of programs and practices? Is there sufficient downstream work in moving interventions to scale and evaluating their effectiveness? When the mix of work within a research program is unbalanced, the corrective actions include: clarifying funding announcements, increasing capacity in the research community, and enhancing incentives to pursue particular categories of research.

Yield of grants

The third component involves assessing whether the yield of grants within each topic is advancing the Institute's goals, particularly the goal of developing and identifying programs and practices that are effective in enhancing academic achievement. For example, are grants on the effects of curriculum and instruction on mathematics and science outcomes yielding promising findings that can be field-tested? Are field tests of programs and practices at scale yielding positive effects? When the yield from a research program is insufficient, the Institute can redirect investments and use different forms of funding-such as contracts and cooperative agreements-to jumpstart and actively shape the research portfolio. (The full research plan that was submitted to the Federal Register for public comment can be found in Attachment B.)

E. Board Assessment of the Institute's Plan for Addressing the Priorities

Because the Institute is relatively young, it has focused on developing new opportunities for researchers. In reviewing the plan for addressing the priorities and the grants that were funded in the last year, the Board concludes that the Institute has made great progress in filling the gaps.

The second component, the mix of types of research within research programs, will be addressed for those research topics that have been through at least two cycles of funding. Addressing the third component, yield, is just beginning to be possible at this point. The Board will be reviewing the grants funded by subject each year to assess whether the corrective actions outlined in the plan have been implemented as needed.

¹The Institute has not yet completed the peer review and award process for applications submitted on topics not covered by topical funding announcements.