This paper, co-authored by the Alliance for Learning Innovation and Digital Promise, outlines a proposal for a federal competitive grant program that would provide state and local education agencies with the capacity to conduct high-quality research and development (R&D). It argues for Congress to authorize a program that would fund new education R&D initiatives at the state and local levels and improve the efficacy of existing efforts.
Why? American K-12 education is in peril. Learning disruptions inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic set student performance back two decades. The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores for 9-year-olds revealed the most significant downturn in reading scores since 1990 and a 7-point drop in mathematics – American students’ first-ever decline in this subject. The same year, the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) showed U.S. student math scores falling 13 points. Declining academic outcomes and a concerning lack of workforce readiness for the jobs of today and tomorrow put America’s position as a global leader in innovation at risk. As education leaders grapple with how to accelerate learning recovery and prepare students for careers in rapidly changing industries, it is clear that the state and pace of educational innovation are not meeting the needs of students and families.
What is needed now are creative new ways to accelerate learning and get students back on track. R&D is the engine that drives evidence-based, innovative improvements to teaching and learning. It is also essential for studying the implementation and impact of new approaches; to understand what works, for whom, and in what conditions. Yet most states and school districts conduct virtually no R&D to generate and test new solutions in a timely and community-informed way. SEA and LEA leaders are not incentivized to make education R&D a priority, nor do they typically have the resources or capacity to engage in robust R&D efforts. This leaves states and localities reliant on a patchwork of siloed federal programs that, while valuable, lack the proximity to communities that SEAs and LEAs possess.
What is needed now are creative new ways to accelerate learning and get students back on track. R&D is the engine that drives evidence-based, innovative improvements to teaching and learning.
A bolder investment in K-12 education R&D, informed by the science of learning, is critical to producing and scaling transformative new approaches and technologies. While there is capacity, infrastructure, and funding (though not nearly enough) for education R&D at the federal level, that is not the case at state and local levels. There is only a patchwork of commitments to R&D at State Education Agencies (SEAs) and Local Education Agencies (LEAs) across the country, leaving huge gaps in America’s innovation ecosystem. Education R&D cannot solely be supported at the federal level, as it is R&D that takes place in closest proximities to communities that is arguably the most nimble, responsive, and effective.
This paper names barriers to achieving a comprehensive education infrastructure across the landscape of state and local education R&D, and offers a policy solution to address them. While the philanthropic, private, and nonprofit sectors can strengthen state and local R&D, this paper focuses on a public policy approach. Specifically, it outlines a federal proposal for a competitive grant to provide state and local education agencies with resources to build capacity for high-quality R&D.
Existing Programs
Before exploring policy opportunities for strengthening R&D at the SEA and LEA levels, it is important to acknowledge the federal education R&D infrastructure that is currently available to states and school districts. Existing infrastructure seeks to provide reliable data, support R&D, and ensure that research findings translate into practical applications in the classroom. While these programs are not collectively sufficient to ensure responsive and inclusive R&D in all communities, each one plays a role in the education R&D ecosystem.
Data for Education R&D
Cross-sector, longitudinal interoperable data are a prerequisite for education R&D. Not only can analyses from these data inform the development of new tools and approaches, but they provide insight to education providers, families, and learners themselves about individual progress over time.
Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems
Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) can (and should) link state data over time and across sectors – from early childhood through K-12 and higher education and the workforce. They enable data insights, not only for researchers but also educators, policymakers, and the public. Connected, longitudinal, cross-sector data are critical for R&D that leads to new approaches and innovations in teaching and learning.
Since 2005, the federal government has supported these data systems through the Institute of Education Science’s (IES) SLDS Grant Program. According to IES, the principle at the heart of this program is “Better decisions require better information.” SLDS grants extend for three to five years and offer up to $20 million per grantee. All fifty states, five territories, and the District of Columbia are eligible to apply – and so far, all but New Mexico have received an SLDS grant.
The Coleridge Initiative
The Coleridge Initiative offers a complementary approach to creating data linkages. A nonprofit organization, Coleridge works with government agencies to increase data usage for public decision-making. It offers a platform that links data within and across states in a secure manner, and it provides data literacy training to government staff.
Education R&D
While education R&D infrastructure is limited at the state and local levels, a few programs and models exist in pockets across the country.
Regional Educational Laboratories
IES’ National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance runs the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) program – a network of labs that partner with educators and policymakers across the country. RELs have been in operation for almost 60 years, and their goal is to collaborate with LEAs, SEAs, and others to generate and apply evidence to improve student outcomes. Their regional approach contributes to research on how educational experiences differ by context and student attributes.
Though there have been as many as 20 RELs, currently only 10 are in operation, each one operating under a five-year contract with IES. RELs are required to:
- Partner with districts, states, and other education stakeholders to identify high-priority needs and ensure that applied research is conducted to address them;
- Provide training, coaching, and technical support for use of research; and
- Communicate research and evidence in a timely, accessible, and actionable manner.
Just as important as the data informing research, and the R&D itself, is knowledge mobilization – efforts to ensure that what comes out of R&D makes its way to practitioners so that they can put it to use.
Research Practice Partnerships
Research Practice Partnerships (RPP) offer another localized approach to education R&D. According to the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships (NNERPP), RPPs are long-term, formal collaborations between education researchers and practitioners and “a promising strategy for producing more relevant research, improving the use of research evidence in decision making, and engaging both researchers and practitioners to tackle problems of practice.”
There is a great deal of variability in what RPPs look like on the ground, including goals, composition, funding sources, and approaches to research.
Some states have established State Research Collaboratives, a type of RPP, to conduct coordinated education R&D. One example is the Center for Connecticut Education Research Collaboration, funded by federal COVID relief dollars. This “first of its kind” collaborative is conducting evaluation studies of COVID projects funded by the Connecticut State Department of Education and research studies related to the “pandemic and beyond.” Another is the new DC Education Research Collaborative, which consists of an Advisory Council and 15 research organizations. Its mission is to “provide everyone who has a stake in the success of DC’s public education community with robust, meaningful, and actionable information to support decisions that improve outcomes and advance equity.”
Knowledge Mobilization
Just as important as the data informing research, and the R&D itself, is knowledge mobilization – efforts to ensure that what comes out of R&D makes its way to practitioners so that they can put it to use. The federal government takes a multi-pronged approach to getting research into the hands of educators – leveraging the RELs and the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) run by IES and the Comprehensive Centers managed by the U.S. Department of Education.
RELs
RELs engage in knowledge mobilization through their work to train and coach others to understand and use research, and in their efforts to make research findings accessible and useful to practitioners. The RELs also develop toolkits to help educators implement recommendations from WWC Practice Guides.
Comprehensive Centers
The country’s 20 Comprehensive Centers also support knowledge mobilization. These centers provide capacity-building services to states to “identify, implement, and sustain effective evidence-based practices that support improved educator and student outcomes.” Funded through the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, this program consists of 19 Regional Centers and one National Comprehensive Center.
What Works Clearinghouse
To help educators, school leaders, and other education stakeholders make evidence-based decisions, IES operates the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC). As a central repository of scientific evidence on education programs, products, practices, and policies, WWC supports research dissemination. WWC reviews education research studies, determines which ones meet rigorous standards, and makes summaries of the findings available to the public.
A similar resource is WestEd’s Doing What Works Library, which makes content from WWC Practice Guides and other sources accessible to educators. It includes videos, sample materials, and tools to make evidence actionable for practitioners. To make this resource even more accessible to educators, The Learning Agency developed a chatbot prototype trained on the Doing What Works Library.
There is no federal program specifically aimed at equipping state education departments and school districts with R&D talent, and there are no explicit, federal-level policy incentives for state and local education leaders to prioritize this type of capacity building.
Talent
SEAs and LEAs cannot build and sustain effective education R&D without skilled, well-trained talent. There is no federal program specifically aimed at equipping state education departments and school districts with R&D talent, and there are no explicit, federal-level policy incentives for state and local education leaders to prioritize this type of capacity building. However, a few privately-run fellowships serve as important education R&D talent initiatives.
Harvard University’s Strategic Data Project Fellowship recruits researchers and analysts with strong leadership skills to serve for two years as full-time education data leaders within a school system or education organization. School system placements consist of SEA, LEAs, and charter management organizations. Another talent approach comes from Results from America and its Invest in What Works State Education Fellowship. This fellowship builds cohorts of SEA program and evaluation leaders and supports them to use “evidence and data to improve education outcomes and advance economic mobility and racial equity.”
Gaps And Barriers To Education R&D
While some state and local education R&D supports exist, there are significant limitations worth noting.
- State and local budget constraints. States and localities must maintain balanced budgets, forcing them to make difficult decisions about where to spend their education dollars. SEA and LEA leaders are faced with prioritizing other critical investments, like teacher salaries and school building maintenance, rather than investing long-term in local R&D leadership and capacity building. When they do allocate their limited resources to R&D, it is usually for required tracking and reporting accountability metrics rather than conducting deeper analyses that might inform educational approaches.
- Lack of connections to research institutions. Many school districts, especially in rural areas, are not proximate to research institutions, making it difficult to forge collaborations with universities or other research partners.
- RPPs are challenging to implement and replicate. NNERPP describes RPPs as “challenging to create and difficult to maintain.” One must identify and secure a partner, procure funding, co-design the research agenda and partnership goals, and put into place structures like data-sharing agreements and MOUs. That’s just to get started! Then the RPP must be maintained through consistent communication, relationship-building, alignment, and co-navigation of challenges like data access. Replication is just as difficult. Former IES Director Mark Schneider explains that, from his perspective, many RPPs are “focused on replicating the Chicago Consortium model… However, after many millions of dollars spent pursuing replication, only a small number of other consortia come anywhere close to being as effective as Chicago’s.”
- Gaps in linked, longitudinal data. Although important investments have been made to establish SLDSs throughout the U.S. and its territories, and to link multiple data sources (e.g., postsecondary and workforce data), these systems must be maintained and modernized. While 49 states and the District of Columbia have received federal SLDS funding, only 35 include postsecondary data, 30 incorporate early learning data, and 27 incorporate workforce data. Additionally, there is more to be done to ensure the data are accessible to various users, while also guaranteeing privacy.
- Persistent challenges in knowledge mobilization. While existing programs like the RELs and WWC aim to bridge the divide between lab and classroom, there is significant room for improvement. A study of how school and district leaders access research shows that only 17 percent of those surveyed use WWC regularly, and only 12 percent take advantage of the RELs on a regular basis. Over half of education leaders rarely or never tap into these resources at all.
- Limited nature of fellowships to support R&D talent. Fellowships as a support for talent at SEAs and LEAs can only go so far. The Strategic Data Project Fellowship has placed fellows in 37 states and 95 school districts since it launched in 2008. Results for America State Education Fellows are in 11 states. Together, these two fellowships provide bright spots of talent, but not nearly enough to fill the R&D talent needs of all SEAs and LEAs across the U.S.
Congress could provide communities with flexible education R&D dollars to develop individualized strategies for local education R&D. SEAs, LEAs, and consortia of both – alone or in partnership with other entities, like community-based organizations – could be eligible to apply for these funds.
Competitive Grant Program for Education R&D
As Congress takes up reauthorization of the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA), a policy window is opening to increase capacity and resources for state and local education R&D. ESRA established IES and the National Board for Education Sciences; and since its enactment, it has shaped the federal government’s efforts to conduct research and collect data on U.S. education. As such, its reauthorization presents an opportunity to reimagine education R&D as not solely a federal endeavor but one that is also carried out closer to communities, by state and local entities like SEAs and LEAs.
One way ESRA could support state and local capacity-building for education R&D is to authorize a new competitive grant program. Congress could provide communities with flexible education R&D dollars to develop individualized strategies for local education R&D. SEAs, LEAs, and consortia of both – alone or in partnership with other entities, like community-based organizations – could be eligible to apply for these funds. Such a program would complement the R&D infrastructure that already exists, and enable states and districts to fill the gaps they identify in their surrounding R&D ecosystem.
Since communities have slightly different contexts and needs, the program would not prescribe the R&D capacity-building activities but instead use criteria to incentivize robust, inclusive R&D. The program would prioritize state and local R&D efforts such as:
- Making smart and strategic use of existing data by leveraging large-scale SEA or LEA data or SLDS data.
- Aiming to develop new approaches or tools for instructional delivery, family engagement, and/or personalized learning to accelerate learning recovery.
- Offering new models and approaches for the rapid testing and development of evidence-based solutions that can potentially be scaled.
- Purposefully collaborating with end-users such as educators, families, community-based organizations, or other community stakeholders.
- Envisioning and implementing a local Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) for education, involving multi-disciplinary collaboration and flexible, targeted investments in projects with high potential to dramatically transform aspects of learning and teaching.
- Encouraging scaling through market-based mechanisms such as district partnerships.
To promote the sustainability of the federal investment, this grant program should require a match from SEAs and LEAs. Recognizing that districts have varying levels of affluence, a tiered structure – with a corresponding, requisite match percentage – should be explored. A local match would incentivize districts to make R&D a higher priority in their budget and set a path for the sustainability of the community-driven R&D they support.
Since this program would offer states and localities the flexibility to deploy federal dollars in ways that best meet community needs, R&D activities would vary from region to region. One school district might decide to invest in building the skills and capacity of its staff to conduct local R&D. Other districts might decide to invest the dollars in knowledge mobilization efforts that find creative ways to make connections between the research community and local practitioners. An SEA might dedicate its grant dollars to forging an RPP with a nearby university to conduct implementation studies across multiple districts to understand what works, for whom, and under what circumstances. Another SEA might choose to establish its own ARPA for education to make “big bets” in high-potential R&D, and collaborate with a community-based organization to ensure that its research agenda is responsive to state and local needs. Or a state might use the grant funds to build its own version of California’s Learning Lab, an initiative that funds projects harnessing technology and the science of learning to close equity gaps.
To cultivate new approaches and edtech that meet community needs, it is important to acknowledge the gaps in our current education R&D landscape and respond by building capacity at the state and local levels.
The benefits of such a competitive grant program are numerous. It would:
- Build infrastructure that brings education R&D closer to classrooms, students, and families, who can directly inform problem identification and solutions;
- Make research findings more actionable and useful to educators;
- Create new testbeds for education innovations; and
- Create the foundation for a national network of SEAs and LEAs to share, spread and scale innovations.
SEAs and LEAs would benefit as they receive the resources needed to bolster their R&D capacity. Of course, students – whose post-pandemic academic needs are greater than ever – would be the ultimate beneficiaries of the educational advances that emerge from the program.
To facilitate the sharing of locally-driven innovations stemming from this grant program, IES could manage a webpage that makes available to the public the proposals for and results of each grant. Another way to promote knowledge mobilization would be for IES to host an annual virtual convening or workshop for all grantees to network and learn from each other. The convening could then inform the development of a public resource shining a light on the most promising practices and innovations resulting from this federal investment.
A narrower version of this program can be found in the bipartisan Advancing Research in Education Act (AREA) of 2023 (S. 3392), introduced by leadership of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) and passed out of committee in December 2023. This legislation would authorize State Capacity Research & Development Grants to increase the capacity of SEAs and the Bureau of Indian Education “to carry out scientifically valid research, data collection, statistical analysis, evaluation, research-practice partnerships … in a manner that is responsive to the needs of students, families, practitioners, education system leaders, and policymakers in the State.” The program could be strengthened by making the funding available to LEAs, as well, and by supporting development and scaling, not just research. However, its inclusion in AREA is an important recognition of the need for state capacity-building and community-informed R&D – and a welcome step in the right direction.
Conclusion
American K-12 education faces significant challenges, but they can be tackled with innovation. To cultivate new approaches and edtech that meet community needs, it is important to acknowledge the gaps in our current education R&D landscape and respond by building capacity at the state and local levels.
With a possible reauthorization of ESRA on the horizon, comes the opportunity to invest in inclusive, community-informed R&D. This could take the form of a competitive grant program that offers resources and flexibility to SEAs, LEAS, and consortia of the two, alone or with other partners, to bring their visions for homegrown R&D to life. Whether a school district or state department of education decides to use the funds to establish its own ARPA, develop internal R&D talent, or establish a learning lab guided by the science of learning, each grant recipient would cultivate R&D infrastructure in its own way. New state and district testbeds would not only serve the local teachers and students charged with making up lost academic ground, but also offer new technologies and approaches that could be implemented in other communities. Such a grant program would represent a relatively small federal investment; but by growing local capacity and seeding new innovations throughout the country, it could have an outsized impact and transform education for the better.
This paper was co-authored by the Alliance for Learning Innovation and Digital Promise.
