IES Blog

Institute of Education Sciences

Gathering Public Input to Help IES Improve

UPDATED SEPTEMBER 5, 2017 

The Institute of Education Sciences is committed to continuous improvement and this includes gathering public input on our work and our resources. Right now, we are seeking feedback on two important aspects of our work:

  • Two of our research goals, Efficacy and Replication and Effectiveness; and
  • Revisions to the What Works Clearinghouse Standards and Procedures handbooks.

Brief overviews of these opportunities are below, with links to where you can get more information and how to submit input. And, as always, if you have thoughts or ideas on how IES can better serve the field, please email us at Contact.IES@ed.gov.

IES Research Goals

IES is seeking input on how we can improve our education and special education research programs, specifically around two of our five research goals—Efficacy and Replication (Goal 3), and Effectiveness (Goal 4). We want to know if these goals, as currently configured, are meeting the needs of the field and whether we should consider changes that would support more replication and effectiveness studies.

The request for feedback comes after IES convened a group of experts to discuss what should come after an efficacy study. This Technical Working Group met last fall and looked at the replication and effectiveness studies that IES has funded over the years and made suggestions on actions IES could take to increase the visibility and support of replication studies, encourage more effectiveness research, and further our understanding of causal mechanisms, variability in impacts, and implementation factors. We shared some of the findings and suggestions in a blog post earlier this year and posted a summary of the working group’s discussion on the IES website (PDF).

Please take a few moments to read the Invitation for Public Comment letter to see the specific questions we are seeking to answer, and send your input and ideas to Comments.Research@ed.gov. We ask that you respond by Monday, October 2, 2017.

What Works Clearinghouse Handbooks

IES is also seeking feedback on revisions to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Procedures and Standards Handbooks. The handbooks describe how the WWC reviews effectiveness research to determine what works in public education.

The proposed Handbooks (WWC Standards and WWC Procedures will now have separate handbooks) have been developed by the WWC in consultation with experts and are made available to users in draft form as part of the process for updating WWC standards. The handbooks can be reviewed on the WWC website and any comments can be sent to contact.wwc@ed.gov. Feedback is requested by August 30. (SEPT. 5 UPDATE: The deadline for submitting feedback has passed although questions and ideas are welcome at the same address.) 

The revisions to WWC handbooks are part of the WWC's ongoing work to increase transparency, refine its processes, develop new standards, and create new products. In fact, the WWC recently launched a new product that was developed based on public input.

For the latest IES, follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and receive email updates through the IES News Flash.

Compiled by Dana Tofig, Communications Director, IES

ED/IES SBIR Awards: Funding the Next Generation of Education Technology

Images of SBIR Phase II ProjectsFor more than a decade, the Department of Education’s Small Business Innovation Research program, operated out of the Institute of Education Sciences, has funded projects to develop education technology designed to support students, teachers, and administrators in general or special education. The program, known as ED/IES SBIR, also focuses on the commercialization after development is complete so that the products can reach schools and be sustained over time. It’s research, with a start-up mentality.

In recent years, millions of students in schools around the country have used technologies developed through ED/IES SBIR funding, such as products by Filament Games, Sokikom, Agile Mind, and Mindset Works, to name a few.

This week, IES announced 18 ED/IES SBIR program awards for 2017. Of these awards, 11 are Phase I awards to develop and test a prototype, and seven are Phase II awards to fully develop and evaluate an education technology product in classrooms and schools. (See a video playlist of Phase II projects below)  

The new awards cover topics across math, science, engineering, reading, support social and behavioral development, and several are building platforms to inform decision-making by teachers and administrators. Several projects are pairing software with hardware-based technologies, such as Virtual Reality, 3D-printing, and Wearables.

The new awards also continue to fund projects in two major categories – learning games and dashboards for teachers and administrators.

Learning Games

For the past seven years, about half of ED/IES SBIR awards have focused on the development and evaluation of learning games (click here for a playlist). Continuing that trend, more than half of the 2017 ED/IES SBIR awards are for game-based technologies. Examples include:

  • Phase II awardee Schell Games and Phase I awardee Electric Funstuff are building games for use with Virtual Reality headsets so that students can engage with academic content in immersive 360-degree environments;

  • Phase II awardee Parametric Studios is creating a “makerspace” engineering simulated environment with a 3D-printer;

  • Phase II awardee Fablevision is developing a fractions game with an adaptive component that auto-adjusts in difficulty to meet the competency level of individual students;

  • Phase II awardee Spry Fox is building in-game supports and using rewards and competition to drive game play in teaching vocabulary to struggling middle school students and English Learners; and

  • Phase I awardees MidSchoolMath and Happy People Games are using story-based narrative to engage students and apply learning, while Fokus Labs and Safe Toddles are creating prototypes employing wearable devices paired with a game component to improve performance.

Dashboards for Teachers and Administrators

Many of the newly funded projects are developing a dashboard component populated with data and information to generate reports that teachers and administrators can use to guide instruction and decision making. Examples include:

  • Phase II awardee Analytic Measures is developing an automated speech recognition technology to assess students’ oral fluency in real-time with a dashboard to provide reports to inform teacher instruction;

  • Phase II awardee Future Engineers is developing an open online platform that generates lists of engineering and maker-based projects for students in K-12 classrooms.

  • Phase I projects by Story World, Strange Loop Games, TutorGen, Simbulus, and Myriad Sensors are creating prototypes of dashboards to provide teachers formative assessment results on student performance with reports to guide instruction; and 

  • Two projects focus on platforms for schools administrators – a Phase II project by EdSurge to inform the selection process for technology for school improvement and a Phase I project by LiveSchool to generate reports on student behavior across classes and school.

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

Written by Edward Metz, program manager, ED/IES SBIR

 

IES at the AERA Annual Meeting

By Dana Tofig, Communications Director, IES

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) will hold its annual meeting April 27 through May 1 in San Antonio, Texas. This is one of the nation’s largest educational research conferences and the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) will be well represented.

More than 100 sessions at the AERA meeting will feature IES staff or work supported by IES. Below is a brief overview, including links to lists of sessions. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook to read our #AERA17 posts. 

IES Staff at AERA

IES staff will participate in 20 different presentations, symposia, roundtables, and professional development sessions during the conference, providing information and insight about the wide range of work that we do.

One highlight will be on Sunday, April 30, 10:35 a.m. CT), during a session entitled Research Statistics, and Data: The Vital Role of the Institute of Education Sciences in Retrospect and Prospect. At the session, Thomas Brock, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Research (delegated the duties of IES director), and Peggy Carr, Acting Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, will be a part of a panel that will discuss the work IES has done over the past 15 years and what the work looks like going forward. They will be joined by other researchers and experts, including Northwestern University’s Larry Hedges, currently the Chair of the National Board for Education Sciences. This session will can be viewed for free via livestream, but you must register in advance.

Other presentations led by or featuring IES staff include sessions about funding opportunities and how to write an application for an IES grant; accessing and using data from NCES and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP); understanding and using international education data, including assessment results; and conversations about different data collections, including race and gender diversity, school-level finance, socioeconomic status and more.

Click here to see a full list of IES staff presentations at AERA.

IES-funded Work at AERA

More than 80 sessions at AERA will feature research and programs that were supported by IES grants and other funding sources. These presentations will cover a wide range of topics, from early childhood education to K-12 to postsecondary opportunities and beyond.

Many of our grantees will present findings from IES-funded research, including the results of IES Research and Development Centers, such as the National Center for Research on Gifted Education, the Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools, the Center for the Study of Adult Literacy, and the Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning.

IES-funded grants will be featured at several other sessions, including eight presentations that will present findings from our Cognition and Student Learning grant program, which builds understanding of how the mind works to inform and improve education practice in reading, writing, mathematics, science, and study skills.

In addition, researchers from several of the Regional Educational Laboratories will present findings on a variety of topics, including early education quality, English learners, teacher evaluations and mobility, college readiness, virtual learning, and much more. 

Also, the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice, an IES-funded Knowledge Utilization Center, will hold several sessions about what they have learned about how educators and policy makers access and use evidence in their decision making.

Click here to see a list of presentations on IES-funded research and programs. 

 

CTE Programs Ripe for Research and Evaluation

Each February, the education community highlights the important of Career and Technical Education (CTE) by celebrating National CTE Month. And this year, we are celebrating a milestone—2017 marks 100 years of CTE legislation.  Participation in CTE classes and programs continues to grow and, as we discussed in a previous blog, there is a critical need for more research in this area of education.

IES is beginning to help fill the CTE research gap. In 2016, the IES National Center for Education Research (NCER) funded a new study led by Professor Shaun Dougherty at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Dougherty (pictured right) and his colleagues will examine the impact of attending a CTE-focused high school on students' achievement, high school graduation, and college enrollment. This will be one of only a handful of studies to provide causal evidence about the impact that CTE has on students.

Specifically, the researchers will compare the outcomes of students attending one of 16 high schools in the Connecticut Technical High School System (CTHSS), where all students participate in some form of CTE, with those of students attending a traditional comprehensive high school, with fewer opportunities to participate in CTE. In addition, the research team will conduct school observations and interviews regarding CTE delivery (e.g., number of CTE programs, industry credentials, and work-based learning opportunities offered) in both types of high schools.

Although this is the first time that Dr. Dougherty has served as a Principal Investigator on an IES-funded grant, he has conducted other research on CTE across the country. IES also sponsors other CTE-related initiatives, including the National Center for Education Statistics’ CTE Statistics Program (which has a new website).

CTE programs are poised to grow in the future as the labor market requires more skilled workers and students seek alternative educational options that lead to rewarding careers. The education field needs high-quality CTE-focused research to provide evidence to support practice. In addition, multidisciplinary perspectives on CTE are needed from researchers in related fields, such as cognitive science, educational psychology, organizational psychology, sociology and economics. Researchers from these fields, as well as others examining CTE questions, are welcome to apply for IES research grants.

Written by Corinne Alfeld, Education Research Analyst, NCER 

A National Picture of Career and Technical Education

By Lisa Hudson, National Center for Education Statistics

Happy National CTE Month! This month celebrates career and technical education (CTE), which is a significant component of the American educational system. 

Overall, 13 percent of the credits that public high school graduates earn are in CTE. Almost all public high school graduates (94 percent) earn at least some credits in CTE, with 36 percent of graduates earning at least 3 credits in CTE occupational fields, such as agriculture, business, and consumer services.  At the postsecondary level, where CTE is defined as subbaccalaureate occupational education, 39 percent of all credential awards are in CTE (see chart below).

These statistics are drawn from the CTE Statistics program at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which provides national-level information on CTE at the secondary and postsecondary education levels, as well as information on occupational certification and licensure. This information  is designed to help the U.S. Department of Education and Congress evaluate the status of CTE as part of its deliberations on federal CTE legislation (currently, the 2006 Carl D. Perkins Act). This information also supports state and local CTE administrators and researchers in their efforts to develop, evaluate, and encourage effective CTE policies and programs.

Statistics, reports and summarized findings about CTE are available on the newly redesigned CTE Statistics website (see screenshot above). Here, you can find information organized into three categories—secondary education, postsecondary education, adults in general—and sorted by topic, including CTE delivery system and offerings; student participation; and student persistence, attainment, and labor market outcomes.  NCES updates the website as new data become available and new reports are produced. In the next two years, we plan to add updated information on participation in CTE by both high school and postsecondary students, as well as data on the foundational skills of adults and their participation in work-experience programs. 



Collecting CTE Statistics  

Statistics on CTE come from federally sponsored national data collections, primarily NCES data collected from schools, teachers, students, and individuals in households.  These data collections are not specifically focused on CTE. Rather, they are general purpose education or demographic surveys from which information on CTE is extracted.  The CTE Statistics website includes a list of these data sources, with links to each data source’s website, where information is provided on how to access the data.

Since CTE is embedded in the larger framework of education, it makes sense that the data collection system for CTE should, itself, be embedded in general education surveys. Using this structure we can learn more about CTE in relation to general education programs. For instance, we can compare postsecondary students who major in CTE fields with those who major in academic fields (CTE students tend to be older) and determine the proportion of the typical high school students’ curriculum that is devoted to CTE (13 percent, as noted above). We can also evaluate how high school students’ participation in CTE relates to their participation in other subject areas, their academic achievement, and their experiences after high school (it’s complicated).
 
Stay Informed
 

Visit the CTE Statistics website often to see what’s new. You can also sign up for automatic email updates using The IES newsflash (Under National Center for Education Statistics, select “Adult and career information.”) If you have thoughts, questions, or ideas, send us an email.