At a time when questions about evidence, implementation, and educational outcomes are becoming increasingly urgent, the systems that support education research and development are under growing pressure. Sara Schapiro is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Learning Innovation (ALI), a bipartisan coalition working to strengthen education R&D (ed R&D) at the federal, state, and local levels. Through policy development, coalition-building, and advocacy, ALI works to connect research, policy, and practice while advancing the infrastructure needed to support evidence-based decision-making in education. In this 5 Questions interview, Schapiro reflects on the challenges facing education R&D, the resilience of the field, and what it will take to build stronger research infrastructure for the future.
What do you do?
At its core, ALI exists because we believe that improving outcomes for America’s students requires serious, sustained investment in generating and using evidence. We bring together researchers, practitioners, state education leaders, and advocates to make the case for a robust ed R&D infrastructure: one that funds rigorous research, supports states in using evidence to make decisions, and builds the field’s capacity to translate what we know into what actually happens in classrooms.
Specifically, ALI publishes policy documents like our Blueprint for the Future of the Federal Role in K–12 Education R&D and our State Education R&D Playbook, which helps state education agencies build their own ed R&D capacity. And we work to connect the dots between what researchers produce, what policymakers need, and what educators can actually use. We are doing this work in coalition with more than 140 organizations that are building shared language and shared purpose across a field that doesn’t always speak with one voice.
Why is this work important?
Education in the United States has a research-to-practice problem. We have accumulated enormous knowledge about what works for students, in reading instruction, in math, in supporting students with disabilities, in early learning, and yet that knowledge doesn’t reliably reach classrooms. Part of the problem is dissemination, and part of it is capacity. But a significant factor is that the infrastructure designed to generate, synthesize, and translate education evidence has been chronically underfunded and undervalued, at both the federal and state levels.
ALI’s work matters because someone has to hold the long view. Individual organizations advocate for their programs and researchers advocate for their fields. But the underlying architecture, the systems, institutions, and norms that make evidence-based education possible at scale, needs its own champions. That’s what we, at ALI, try to be.
What’s been the biggest surprise so far?
There have been many surprises, especially in the last year or so! But one of the biggest – and best – surprises has been the resilience of the ed R&D field in the face of incredible obstacles.
When the current administration fired roughly 90 percent of the Institute of Education Sciences’ staff, it was genuinely shocking. IES is the home to much of the federal education research infrastructure, including the national test known as NAEP, programs that fund research, like Accelerate, Transform, and Scale (long championed by ALI), teacher Practice Guides, decades of longitudinal data, and so much more. Watching that capacity decimated in a matter of weeks was devastating.
I’m surprised that we are in a much better place than we were a year ago; I wouldn’t have predicted that. Hiring at IES is picking up. The field mobilized, and researchers, practitioners, and policymakers who might never have thought of themselves as advocates got loud. Then Amber Northern, at the request of the administration, released the Reimagining IES report that echoed much of what ALI has been pushing through our coalition’s work and through our blueprint, such as the need for stronger connections between research and practice, clearer priorities, and a more strategic federal role.
It was a reminder that our ideas matter and that in the face of a crisis, having a forward-looking, credible vision was critical. But I’m not just surprised that things survived; the disruption may have created an unexpected opening to build a better ed R&D infrastructure in the future.
Where do you see your work in five years?
Five years from now, I hope ALI has helped shift the default assumption about education policy, from research is a “nice-to-have” to evidence infrastructure is as essential as any other public investment in education – and that education is as deserving of investments in R&D as every other sector in our economy. That’s a big policy and cultural change, and it will take time.
At the federal level, I’d like to see the blueprint’s core recommendations reflected in statute or durable agency practice to create a stronger, better-resourced IES with clearer connections to state and local decision-makers and a dissemination infrastructure that actually moves evidence into schools. At the state level, I hope to see a growing number of state education agencies that have used our playbook to build genuine R&D capacity of their own, supported by the kind of funder investment that makes that work sustainable.
What else should people know?
The work that ALI does is hopeful, and I want people to know that because the policy world can feel a bit grim at times!
Yes, the past year has been hard. Federal infrastructure was damaged, people lost jobs, and ongoing research was disrupted. Those were real losses with real consequences for students and for the field. And the political environment remains volatile in ways that make long-term planning difficult.
But I’ve also watched something remarkable: a community of people who care deeply about education evidence refused to give up. Researchers pivoted, state leaders stepped up, and funders stayed the course and, in some cases, leaned further in.
ALI exists in that space between the policy window and the long game, between the urgent and the important. We try to be useful in this crisis and also to be visionary about what comes after. What I want people to know is that there is an “after” worth working toward, and that the case for investing in ed R&D has never been stronger. The evidence on evidence, if you will, is good. We know this infrastructure matters. Now we have to build it to last!
