IES Blog

The U.S. Department of Education’s ten Regional Educational Labs (RELs) partner with states, districts, and education service agencies to create and support the use of evidence by educators and administrators. RELs provide a wide variety of direct services to our partners, including evidence- or research-focused training, coaching, technical support, and applied research. 

RELs also create free, user-friendly tools and resources that any state, district, education service agency, or other support provider can use so that the learnings from direct REL services can be shared nationwide. Below, we share a sampling of products across key topic areas. Visit our website to access our full library of over 2,000 tools, resources, and studies.

Literacy

A Practitioner’s Guide to Improving Literacy Outcomes for Students by Using Evidence to Strengthen Programs and Practices (IES, 2024)

This resource was developed to help state and local education agencies implement evidence-based literacy practices in their classrooms. It is based on the U.S. Department of Education’s Non-Regulatory Guidance for using evidence to improve teaching and learning that includes a five-step, continuous improvement cycle. Each step includes freely available, high-quality literacy resources.

Empowering Young Readers by Using Assessment Data to Inform Evidence-Based Word Reading Skill Instruction (REL Midwest, 2024)

This resource features a set of flowcharts that can help K-2 educators identify student skill reading needs in phonological awareness, phonics, and fluency based on universal screening data. Once the needs are identified, the flowcharts direct educators toward evidence-based instructional practices that can be used to provide reading acceleration targeted to student needs. 

Professional Learning Community: Emergent Literacy (REL Southeast, 2020)

This resource supports preschool teachers through collaborative learning experiences in a professional learning community (PLC). Preschool teachers who participate in this PLC will learn evidence-based instructional practices that can enhance their emergent literacy instruction and benefit their students.

Teacher’s Guide to Supporting Family Involvement in Foundational Reading Skills (REL Southeast)

This is a companion to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) practice guide, Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade. This guide is organized according to the four recommendations and how-to steps from the WWC practice guide. The activities follow the typical developmental progression through which students learn to read. While teachers may use the guide sequentially, the activities are designed to be used flexibly. Teachers can select activities to share with families based on each student’s instructional needs. 

• A Kindergarten Teacher’s Guide to Supporting Family Involvement in Foundational Reading Skills (REL Southeast, 2020) 
• A First Grade Teacher’s Guide to Supporting Family Involvement in Foundational Reading Skills (REL Southeast, 2020) 
• A Second Grade Teacher’s Guide to Supporting Family Involvement in Foundational Reading Skills (REL Southeast, 2021) 
• A Third-Grade Teacher’s Guide to Supporting Family Involvement in Foundational Reading Skills (REL Southeast, 2021)

STEM

Community Math Night Facilitators’ Toolkit (REL Appalachia, 2021)

REL Appalachia created the Community Math Night Facilitators’ Toolkit as a detailed resource for K–5 elementary school educators to plan and implement a Community Math Night event. Community Math Nights use research-based, interactive math activities to engage families in building positive math attitudes, facilitate their participation in children’s math learning, and build a community of educators, students, families, and other caring adults to support students. 

Professional Learning Community: Improving Mathematical Problem Solving for Students in Grades 4 through 8 (REL Southeast, 2019)

REL Southeast developed this facilitator’s guide on the topic of mathematical problem solving for use in professional learning community settings. The facilitator’s guide is a set of professional development materials designed to supplement the What Works Clearinghouse practice guide, Improving Mathematical Problem Solving in Grades 4 Through 8. 

How Educators and Caregivers Can Create Supportive Conditions for Success in PreK-12 Mathematics (REL Program, 2023)

This infographic includes freely-available, evidence-based resources from across the REL program that all educators can use immediately to promote supportive math learning both in school and in partnership with families and caregivers in the community.

Multilingualism

Supporting Integrated English Learner Student Instruction – A Guide to Assess Professional Learning Needs (REL West, 2021)

REL West and the Region 15 Comprehensive Center developed a guide to assess teacher professional learning needs to implement research-based recommendations for the instruction of elementary-grade English learner students. 

Welcoming, Registering, and Supporting Newcomer Students: A Toolkit for Educators of Immigrant and Refugee Students in Secondary Schools (REL Northwest, 2021)

This resource toolkit is intended to help educators and other stakeholders identify and use research-based practices, policies, and procedures for welcoming, registering, and supporting newcomer immigrant and refugee students who are attending secondary schools (grades 6-12) in the United States. Resources include professional development curricula, policy and implementation guides, evaluation reports, and sample surveys and assessments.

Professional Learning Communities Facilitator’s Guide for the What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School (REL Southwest, 2015)

This facilitator’s guide is designed to assist professional learning communities (PLCs) in applying evidence-based strategies to help K-8 English learners acquire the language and literacy skills needed to succeed academically. 

Resources for Determining Special Education Eligibility of English Learners (REL Northeast & Islands, 2021)

The resources provided on this page can be used by teachers and administrators working with English learners both to provide high-quality instruction and to build practices to better determine special education eligibility. 

Teacher Workforce

Automated Teacher Diversity District Tool (REL Mid-Atlantic, 2020)

This tool is designed to help state education agency staff support districts in identifying gaps in the diversity of their teacher workforces. The automated tool generates district-level reports that provide the racial/ethnic make-up of a district’s student and teacher populations and its three- and five-year teacher retention rates by race and ethnicity. The template can be used to prepare reports for any number of districts. Inputting the data could take as little as 30 minutes if the data are readily available. After gathering and entering the necessary data, the tool takes one to two minutes to generate district reports.

How to Grow Teacher Wellbeing in Your Schools (REL Pacific, 2020)

The social, emotional, and physical health of teachers is a shared responsibility and a critical component of student learning and overall community wellbeing. Check out this infographic to learn more about why teacher wellbeing matters and how to support it in your school.

Lessons From Stay Interviews of Early Career Teachers in Four Utah School Districts (REL West, 2024)

This resource is an overview of local teacher attrition rates and exit survey results as well as national survey data on teacher well-being and research on new teacher induction and mentoring as part of the Utah Early Career Teacher Retention (U-ECTR) partnership. The partnership is dedicated to understanding and addressing the root causes of early career attrition.

In September of this year, the School Pulse Panel (SPP), NCES’s innovative approach to delivering timely information on public K-12 schools in the U.S., surveyed around 1,500 school leaders on their school’s plans to incorporate the 2024 national election into lessons and whether they planned to run any election-related activities such as mock debates or mock voting. While schools were not asked what type of content was included in these lessons or in the election-related activities, the findings presented here show the prevalence of election-related information and engagement opportunities in the nation’s public schools.

Figure 1 shows the percentage of schools that reported that teachers were incorporating the 2024 national election into their lessons, for each of the respective grades. More than half of public schools reported that teachers were incorporating the national election into their lessons at fourth and higher grades, peaking at twelfth grade (85 percent). 

Figure 1. Percentage of public schools that had at least one teacher incorporating the 2024 national election cycle into lessons, by grade, 2024-25 school year

Overall, 77 percent of public schools reported that they had teachers incorporating the election into their lessons. There was some regional variation in the percentage of schools that reported teachers incorporating the election, with higher percentages of public schools in the Northeast (82 percent) and Midwest (82 percent) incorporating the election compared to schools in the South (75 percent) and West (74 percent).

In addition to lessons, school leaders reported on various special programming activities centered around the 2024 election. Overall, 52 percent of public schools reported having one or more of the following: voter registration opportunities for students ¹, mock debates, mock voting, assemblies/guest speakers, or some other program related to the election. As seen in Figure 2, a higher percentage of high/secondary schools reported running these kinds of programs, compared to elementary or middle/combined schools. Table 1 shows the percentages of schools offering each of these programs for all public schools and by school level.

Figure 2. Percentage of public schools with any special programming around the 2024 national election cycle, by school level, 2024-25 school year

Table 1. Percentage of public schools with selected special programming activities around the 2024 national election cycle, by school level, 2024-25 school year

^a Only asked of schools serving 11^th- or 12^th- grade students.

‡ Reporting standards not met. The coefficient of variation is greater than 50 percent or there are too few cases for a reliable analysis.

Among public schools enrolling students in 11^th- or 12^th- grade, 66 percent reported that they held voter registration opportunities for their students. Figure 3 shows the variation in the percentage of schools that offered registration opportunities by school neighborhood poverty level, percent students of color, school size, school locale, and region. Among different school sizes, a lower percentage of the smallest schools in the country (0-299 students) held voter registration events for their students, compared to all other school size groups. Among regions, a higher percentage of schools in the Northeast reported providing these opportunities, compared to the Midwest and West.

Figure 3. Among public schools enrolling students in 11^th- or 12^th- grade, percentage that had voter registration opportunities for their students, by school characteristics, 2024-25 school year

To explore these data – for all public schools and by neighborhood poverty level, percent students of color, school level, school size, locale, and region – check out the interactive SPP dashboard.

[1]Only among schools serving 11^th- or 12^th- grade students.

The U.S. Department of Education and IES’s Small Business Innovation Research program (ED/IES SBIR) funds entrepreneurial developers and research partners to create the next generation of education technology products for students, teachers, and administrators. The program emphasizes an iterative research and development process and pilot studies to evaluate the feasibility, usability, and promise of new products to improve education outcomes. The program also focuses on commercialization after development is complete so that the products can be disseminated and be sustained over time. Each year, millions of students in thousands of schools around the country use ED/IES SBIR products.

The ED/IES SBIR 2025 Program Is Now OPEN

On Friday, November 8, 2025, ED/IES SBIR released three FY2025 program solicitations, including:

• The Phase IA solicitation requests proposals for the development of prototypes of novel education technology products where no or limited previous research and development has already occurred.
• The Phase IB solicitation requests proposals for the development of a new component to be added to an existing research-based education technology prototype or product.
• The Direct to Phase II solicitation requests proposals for the development of new education technology products to ready evidence-based innovations for use at scale. Researcher(s) at a university or non-profit education organization must have created the existing evidence-based innovation.

The proposal submission date and time is January 8, 2025 at 11AM EST. See this website page for more information and for URL links to download each solicitation on SAM.gov.   

ED/IES SBIR Recaps its 2024 Awards

For FY2024, ED/IES SBIR made 23 SBIR awards, 12 Phase I, 8 Phase II, and 3 Direct to Phase II projects. Phase I projects ($250,000 over 8 months) include development and evaluation of a new prototype. Phase I awardees will be eligible to apply for a Phase II award in FY 2025. Phase II projects ($1M over 2 years) include full scale development and evaluation of new products initially developed with FY 2023 Phase I awards. Direct to Phase II projects ($1M over 2 years) occur without a prior Phase I award and focus on the development and evaluation of new products to prepare existing researcher-developed evidence-based innovations for use at scale. Watch short videos with more information about the ED/IES SBIR 2024 Phase II and Direct to Phase II projects here.

The FY 2024 ED/IES SBIR awards highlight trends in the field of education technology.

Trend 1: Using artificial intelligence to personalize learning and generate insights to inform tailored instruction. About half of the new projects are developing artificial intelligence (AI) based software components to personalize learning and instruction. These projects take advantage of AI functionalities to generate new or adjust existing content to meet the needs of individual learners, offer real-time feedback to scaffold learning, and produce real-time prompts and insights that educators can use to track student progress and adjust instruction accordingly.

• In the area of English language arts, Kibeam Learning, Inc. (formerly Kinoo, Inc) will support children as they independently explore and read books; Common Ground Publishing , LLC will support student writing; RapStudy Inc. will create songs with customized lyrics for academic learning; and with two new Phase I awards, Charmtech Labs LLC will develop two new prototypes, one to add items for an existing reading assessment (ReadBasix) and another to create new localized and culturally responsive assessment items to measure reading and inform instruction.
• For English learners, StoryWorld International Corp will personalize vocabulary acquisition, and Linguistic Inc will generate vocational resources for adult English learners.
• In math, Inletech LLC will allow students to create personalized stories to explore and learn math in a simulated real-world context, and Oko Labs, Inc. will engage students in a collaborative process to solve puzzles by doing math.
• For social, behavioral, and mental health, Edifii, Inc will develop a chatbot to provide guidance counselors insights on how individual students are planning for their future, and Sown to Grow, Inc. will create a logic-based algorithm to identify students at risk for mental health challenges and inform intervention.

Trend 2: Engaging students through games, interactive and hands-on activities, and collaborative learning. Projects are designing innovative learning technologies to engage students through pedagogies employing game-based, collaborative learning, and hands-on activities.

• Several awardees will develop hybrid online and in-person collaborative games, including Liminal Esports LLC (doing business as Snowbright Studio), Alterea, Inc., INFINID LEARNING INC (doing business as Mission.io), and Makefully LLC, for topics in social studies, and Immersed Games Inc and dfusion Inc. for topics in mathematics.
• In music education, Edify Technologies, Inc is developing an interactive app for K to 2 students.
• For computer science, Chibitronics Inc will develop a physical and digital circuitry toolkit.
• In the area of study skills and social emotional learning, ZenStudy LLC will develop a multi-media platform with strategies for college students to be successful.

Trend 3: Advancing research to practice at scale through education technology. Three Direct to Phase II awards will ready existing evidence-based innovations for use at scale through the development of new education technology products.

• FigStar Learning will develop a new professional learning management system to ready a prior IES-supported professional development program for use at scale to support children who are English Learners.
• Graspable Inc will develop new functionalities to scale a prior IES-supported math game.
• Nimble Hiring, PBC. will develop a dashboard to provide real-time insights to administrators to inform teacher hiring decisions using a model developed in prior IES-funded research.

Stay tuned for updates on Facebook and LinkedIn as IES continues to support innovative forms of technology.

Edward Metz (Edward.Metz@ed.gov) is the program manager of the ED/IES SBIR program.

Laurie Hobbs (Laurie.Hobbs@ed.gov) is the program analyst of the ED/IES SBIR program.

Literacy is a critical component for success at all levels of education from early childhood through adulthood. Since 2013, 38 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws or implemented new policies focused on evidence-based reading instruction—and the RELs have been here to support them all along the way. In this latest update to the RELs Make a Difference blog series, we’ll look at how two RELs are supporting statewide literacy goals, the implications for scaling these efforts statewide, and how they’re using other IES and Department of Education resources to help states learn what works. These REL partnerships aim is to create a ripple effect: better-trained coaches and teachers, improved teaching practices, and ultimately, higher academic achievement for EL students.

REL Southeast

Alabama Research Partnership on Improving English Learner Outcomes

The Alabama State Department of Education’s motto is Every Child. Every Chance. Every Day.  The state’s Framework for English Learner Success notes that the number of English learners (EL) in Alabama has increased significantly in recent years, and affirms the state’s commitment to “access to high-quality instruction based on research and data-informed policies, services, and practices” for EL students. REL Southeast is providing intensive training and strategic coaching on evidence-based teaching practices to support English learner  students in the state through a partnership with the Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE) and multiple school districts.

“I liked that we studied the information first and then were given the opportunity to deliver it to the teachers.”
—ALSDE EL Regional Specialist

First, REL Southeast trained 12 ALSDE regional EL specialists and 13 district facilitators on the four key teaching strategies from the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guide, Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle Schools. REL Southeast built upon an accompanying Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) Facilitator’s Guide developed by REL Southwest to inform the monthly training.

In turn, the regional EL specialists and district facilitators delivered these trainings to school teams of three teachers and an instructional specialist or administrator. The REL assisted by providing evidence-based instructional and coaching practices to support the implementation of the practice guide for EL students in grades K through 8. One of the PLC teachers has volunteered to model these instructional practices in a video recording, which will be shared with local and national organizations to support other practitioners with implementation.

To build on the training and coaching, ALSDE asked REL Southeast to evaluate the High-Quality Instruction and Assessment (HQIA) for English Learners Protocol. Developed with support from the Region 7 Comprehensive Center, HQIA outlines five key teaching strategies designed to boost EL students' learning. The study will focus on how HQIA is being used in classrooms, how closely teachers are following it, and its impact on both teaching methods and student outcomes compared to schools not using HQIA.

South Carolina Partnership to Implement Professional Learning Community: Emergent Literacy

REL Southeast is supporting early childhood leaders and preschools implement evidence-based literacy practices through South Carolina’s Partnership to Implement Professional Learning: Emergent Literacy (PLC-EL). This partnership supports preschools’ use of  emergent literacy materials developed by REL Southeast in 2020. REL Southeast will coach partners in implementation, support a professional learning community to learn about barriers to implementation, and conduct an applied research study to evaluate the implementation and impact of the professional learning community on teacher practice and student outcomes.

“We have already heard from several facilitators how effective the PLC-EL model is for giving a safe place for strong conversations. This has been a tremendous and exciting project…we are hopeful to meet all the high expectations IES, the REL, REL Governing Board, and USDE have charged us with through this process.”
—Wendy Burgess, Team Lead, Office of Early Learning and Literacy, SCDE

As part of this project, REL Southeast is providing intensive coaching to staff at 7 preschool centers. At each preschool, a leader (like an executive director or principal) champions the full implementation of PLC-EL, a facilitator engages in coaching activities, and teachers participate in PLC-EL sessions. REL Southeast works with these site teams to execute all 12 PLC-EL sessions, support facilitators in their role as trainer and coach, and ensure the sustainability of PLC-EL practices. Simultaneously, REL Southeast supports school leaders and teachers in overcoming hurdles and applying emergent literacy practices in classrooms.

During coaching activities, REL Southeast facilitates continuous improvement cycles with the site teams to refine partnership activities and assess needs. The teams, with support from REL Southeast, will implement the PLC-EL, function as a community of practice, analyze implementation drivers, establish feedback loops, and contribute to the partnership’s research study.

But REL Southeast’s PLC-EL project isn’t just about making a difference in a few classrooms—it also aims to develop scalable practices that can be adopted by preschools across the state. REL Southeast’s forthcoming applied research study is focused on evaluating the impact of PLC-EL on teachers' knowledge and instructional practices and on children's print knowledge, phonological awareness, vocabulary, oral language skills, and school readiness. The study will investigate the conditions, facilitators, and barriers affecting the implementation of PLC-EL in prekindergarten sites, aiming to leverage practice-to-policy opportunities and inform broader implementation strategies, helping to bring effective literacy practices to more educators and students throughout South Carolina.

REL Northwest

Alaska Literacy Strategic Plan Partnership

“I loved our professional development. The breakout sessions were great. People were talking about it…the discussion was rich.”
—State Leader

As identified by Alaska’s Education Challenge, literacy is the top priority for Alaska’s Department of Education and Early Development (AK DEED). With support from REL Northwest, the Alaska Literacy Strategic Plan Partnership developed evaluation questions and identified data sources for measuring progress toward their Strategic Reading Plan progress. REL Northwest supported AK DEED to understand a range of reading assessment data and prepare data displays for the Alaska Science of Reading Symposium as they analyzed literacy and reading data from early childhood assessments, Performance Evaluation for Alaska’s Schools, the National Assessment of Student Progress, and a district survey focused on reading practices, curricula, and assessments. The REL also supported AK DEED in the development of data displays and related questions to help share, interpret, and discuss data with conference participants. REL Northwest also helped AK DEED revise their District Reading Survey and supported AK DEED staff members to analyze and interpret data from the survey and data from literacy screeners which are required statewide for kindergarten through grade 3 students. These supports are ultimately intended to support the professional development of Alaska’s educators in the service of improving student outcomes and sparking impactful conversations among state leaders about Alaska’s reading performance and innovative strategies to improve student outcomes.

What is the Common Core of Data?

Every year, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) releases nonfiscal data files from the Common Core of Data (CCD), one of the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED’s) primary resources on public elementary and secondary school districts, schools, and students. CCD nonfiscal data are made available to the public as data files, as well as in user-friendly data tools, and include the district and school directory (location, operational status, and grades offered) as well as data on student membership (by grade, sex, and race/ethnicity), full-time equivalent staff and teachers, and the number of students eligible for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). 

Why is CCD so important?

The CCD is a trusted data source used by ED stakeholders, researchers, and the public. Timely release of high-quality, accurate CCD data is critical not only to these stakeholders but also to ED’s commitment to providing high-quality data products. 

CCD data are now released within months of submission by states!

Over the past several years, NCES made process improvements to the collection and dissemination of CCD data (described below) that allow NCES to release the CCD data more quickly than ever before. As a result of these changes, the school year (SY) 2023-24 CCD data files will be available to the public less than 4 months after the July 2024 submission due date.

In contrast, the SY 2016-17 CCD data files were due in May 2017 and released January 2019 (a full 20 months later).

What has NCES done to release HIGH-QUALITY CCD nonfiscal data so quickly?

NCES modernized the CCD nonfiscal data quality (DQ) review and file production process in two phases:

Phase 1: Modernized CCD DQ review and file production. Defined the DQ standard through business rules, held state data providers to the defined DQ standard, developed a system to provide DQ feedback to states within a few days of submission, and improved the public file format.

This CCD data quality system developed in Phase 1 served as a sandbox for the broader EDFacts modernization project, called EDPass. EDPass is a centralized data submission system used by ED to standardize data submissions across ED offices. 

Phase 2: Full modernization of data submissions with EDPass. NCES manages the EDPass data submission tool for use by ED stakeholders including NCES, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE), and the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). The new submission tool, rolled out with the SY 2022-23 collection cycle, eliminated the time-consuming post-submission DQ process by running DQ checks at upload and requiring states to address all data quality issues prior to data submission. Critical components of this successful implementation included:

• Clear message from ED that high-quality data are expected at the due date
  • NCES communicated the change in the submission process to state CCD Coordinators 2 years in advance
  • Due dates were shifted to accommodate pre-submission DQ checks and to give states more time to get accustomed to the new process
  • ED set due dates and held states accountable for the quality of the data; poor- quality data were suppressed and late data submissions were not included in data releases
• Investments in people and technology
  • NCES’s new EDPass submission system is user-friendly
  • NCES CCD staff and contractors increased direct support to states during data collection through well-attended office hour sessions
• Improved data quality process
  • NCES published the full catalog of standardized business rules that align with data file specifications
  • States receive data quality results within minutes of a file upload
  • EDPass system does not allow states to submit any uploaded data files until all identified DQ issues are addressed
• Enhanced DQ reports
  • All DQ results are available for ED stakeholder use immediately after the collection due date
  • Data notes that accompany file releases provide state explanations for identified DQ issues and are built directly from state comments provided during data submission
• State buy-in
  • State data submitters contributed feedback on the new system and processes during development
  • States made systematic internal data governance improvements in response to EDPass modernization and the improved data quality process

Conclusions

As demonstrated by the SY 2023-24 CCD data release, ED’s bold investment in EDPass technology and end-to-end process changes allow for the release of high-quality, consistent data products more quickly than ever. The benefits from this investment, however, reach beyond data products, resulting in significant burden reductions both for states and for ED program offices that use the data. EDPass modernization also supports compliance with the Information Quality Act, the ED-wide Data Strategy effort to improve data access and advance the strategic use of data and, more broadly, ED’s efforts to comply with the November 2023 Office of Inspector General Management Challenges report.  

Finally, while the gains from the EDPass modernization are illustrated in this blog through the SY 2023-24 CCD nonfiscal data release, this modernization impacts ALL data collected through the EDFacts submission system and will enable earlier release of high-quality data by other program offices, including OESE through ED Data Express and OSEP through ED’s Open Data Platform.