Inside IES Research

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.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is delighted to announce the establishment of a new National Research and Development (R&D) Center on Improving Outcomes in Elementary Science Education. Both the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and IES are equally sharing the investment, with each contributing 50% of the total investment of $15 million.

Delivery of comprehensive, multidimensional science education across K-12 is a national challenge, requiring teaching and learning approaches that emphasize a deep understanding of core science topics, cross-cutting concepts, and scientific practices to answer pertinent questions and construct important scientific explanations. There is also a critical need for the development and validation of high-quality measures of elementary science achievement. The Center for Advancing Elementary Science through Assessment, Research, and Technology (CAESART) will address these needs.

A focus on elementary science increases opportunities to develop learners’ early pathways to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning and careers, particularly among populations historically underrepresented in the STEM workforce, and to develop a well-informed citizenry. 

Through partnerships among STEM researchers, leaders, and practitioners at the state, district, and school level, CAESART will generate timely evidence on how to measure elementary student science learning and evaluate the efficacy of high-quality integrated science and literacy curricula to improve student science outcomes over time. The Center’s approach will include, but is not limited to:

• a landscape analysis of existing elementary science assessments,
• the development, testing, and validation of a set of technology-based assessments that utilize adaptive and game-based structures, and
• an evaluation of the impact of an integrated science curriculum on science learning using the developed assessments. 

“This new partnership with NSF goes beyond building much-needed evidence about science assessment and learning,” said acting IES director Matthew Soldner. “It reflects our shared commitment to improving student achievement in STEM, leveraging NSF’s unique role in supporting the development of high-quality programs and products and IES’s expertise in identifying what works, for whom, and under what conditions.”

CAESART will also provide national leadership in building capacity for rigorous science assessment, sharing resources, and offering workshops and mentoring for researchers, as well as collaborating with critical stakeholders to disseminate findings. CAESART will recruit participants nationally, with concentrations in Miami, Los Angeles, and the Northeast region of the country to increase generalizability across student populations. 

This Center is supported through a cooperative agreement to provide enhanced support with IES and NSF and to advance research and national leadership on effective elementary science education.

“By partnering with IES to support CAESART, NSF’s Directorate for STEM Education (EDU) is able to not only leverage its human and financial resources but also expand its investments in critical research and assessment methods that will transform early science education at its foundation for our youngest learners, ” said NSF assistant director for STEM Education, James L. Moore III. “It will allow researchers, in collaboration with science educators and students, to develop innovative curricular, tools, and approaches that will improve science instruction while ensuring that students across the nation have access to high-quality, learning experiences. My colleagues in EDU are looking forward to seeing the immediate and long-term impact the center will have in early science education across the nation and beyond.”

This blog was written by Christina Chhin (Christina.Chhin@ed.gov), Program Officer, NCER, and Laura Namy (Laura.Namy@ed.gov), Associate Commissioner, NCER.

IES announces a new National Research and Development (R&D) Center focusing on K-12 teacher recruitment and retention policy: the Center for Longitudinal Data in Education Research - Teacher Recruitment & Retention (CALDER-R&R). Shortages in the K-12 classroom teacher workforce are a longstanding problem and have worsened in recent years. The School Pulse Panel results indicate 44 percent of public schools reported having one or more vacant teaching positions during the fall of 2022, with greater rates in high-poverty communities (57 percent high-poverty versus 41 percent low-poverty) and in schools with higher minority populations (60 percent high-minority versus 32 percent low-minority). The overwhelming majority of schools attribute difficulties to filling vacancies to too few applicants. This Center will examine policies addressing teacher shortages and their impact on teachers, student learning, and equity. The policies address a range of shortage areas and operate at multiple stages of the teacher pipeline.

Specifically, the Center team will focus on the following policies:

• Grow-your-own initiatives designed to address teacher shortages and increase teacher diversity in high-needs districts
• Financial support to teacher candidates in exchange for work commitments
• Labor market information to teacher candidates intended to influence their decisions about specialization and job searching
• Licensure reforms that provide temporary licensure, change the cut scores required to pass licensure tests, or both
• Financial incentives, including salary floor policies, pay-for-performance policies, and financial incentives targeted to teachers in low-income schools and in specific shortage subject areas
• Teacher working conditions, including the 4-day school week, advanced teaching roles, and working conditions negotiated in collective bargaining agreements

To study these policies, the Center team will be using data from the following states: Arkansas, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington. In addition, the Center team will be using data from school districts in the Atlanta, GA metro area as well as Houston, TX.

Researchers will use state longitudinal data systems and analytic approaches to estimate causal impacts. The Center will evaluate fidelity of implementation, explore how intended policies were translated into practice, and identify key contextual factors that may influence the generalizability of the results. The Center will document the costs and cost effectiveness of these policies. Via a survey of a nationally representative sample of teachers, the Center will seek to understand how the interventions are viewed outside the study settings and to understand how teachers view trade-offs associated with different interventions. Through its leadership and outreach activities, the Center will build on existing stakeholder networks to disseminate findings and inform next steps to improve research, practice, and policy around K-12 teacher recruitment and retention.

This new R&D Center was awarded as a cooperative agreement with IES. IES is looking forward to working with the new Center to advance education research, policy, and practice in this key education issue that faces our nation.

Map of Center for Longitudinal Data in Education Research - Teacher Recruitment & Retention (CALDER-R&R) Partner States

This blog was written by Wai-Ying Chow (Wai-Ying.Chow@ed.gov), program officer, NCER.

As part of the IES-funded Prekindergarten Through Grade 12 Recovery Research Network, the Georgia Policy Labs has been working to gauge the effects of economic insecurity and health stressors on student engagement and achievement during and after COVID-19 era remote learning. In this guest blog, Dr. Tim Sass, principal investigator of the IES-funded project and Distinguished Professor at Georgia State University, discusses a challenge his research team faced while linking home environment and student academic success, highlighting an obstacle to collecting home background survey data from parents/legal guardians. Dr. Sass shares his team’s practical solution to address this challenge.

The Challenge: Difficulty Collecting Data about Student Home Situation

A major challenge to studying out-of-school factors that contribute to student academic success is the lack of information about a student’s home situation. Standard administrative data barely scratch the surface, providing information on language spoken at home, eligibility for subsidized meals (an admittedly crude measure of poverty), and little else. This lack of information became even more problematic during the COVID-19 pandemic, when students were learning from home, and the pandemic had severe effects on many families’ health and economic well-being.

As part of our project, we focus on identifying the factors associated with student engagement and achievement growth in remote instruction. Our initial strategy was to gather survey data in three of our partner school districts in metro Atlanta. We created a questionnaire to measure student engagement as well as collect information on economic insecurity, health stressors, and protective factors like adult monitoring of student learning at home or hiring a tutor. However, we faced two major challenges that made it difficult for us to collect the information we needed.

The first challenge was creating a process for identifying respondents.  Our partners agreed to send out the survey on our behalf, using their established systems for communicating with parents/guardians. Our intent was to make the responses identifiable so we could directly link information gathered from the survey to outcomes for specific students. While one of our partner districts was not comfortable with identifying individual respondents, it agreed to identify respondents’ school of enrollment. A second district agreed to identify respondents, but due to miscommunication within the district, their survey team made the survey anonymous. Finally, the third district agreed to allow linking individual responses to student ID numbers but left it up to parents/guardians to identify their student in the survey, and only about half of respondents filled in their student’s ID number.   

The second challenge was the very low response rates: 192 respondents from District A (0.4% response rate), 1,171 respondents from District B (1.2% response rate), and 80 respondents from District C (0.1% response rate). While disappointing, the low response rates are not unique to our study. Other researchers have struggled to get parents/guardians to respond to surveys conducted during the pandemic or shortly after the resumption of in-person instruction.

The Solution: Using Non-School-Based Administrative Data from Multiple Agencies to Complement Survey Data

Given the low response rates and non-identifiable responses, we considered how we could use additional non-school-based administrative data to complement the survey evidence. Through a partnership with researchers from the Atlanta Regional Commission, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and the Georgia Institute of Technology, we obtained data from court records on evictions in the Atlanta Metro Area. The data cover four of the five “core” counties in the Atlanta Metro Area, spanning calendar years 2019-21. Over this period, there were approximately 300,000 unique eviction filings across the four-county area, including both households with and without school-aged children. The court records contain a property address and filing date, which were used to match yearly eviction filings to students based on district student address files.

The following table provides counts of students that we successfully linked to eviction filings by district and year.  “Experienced Eviction” refers to cases where we directly matched an individual dwelling unit to an eviction filing.  In many cases, however, the street address in the eviction filing is for a multi-family structure, and there is not enough information in the filing or in the student address files to directly match a student living in the complex with the unit in which the eviction filing occurred.  When this type of match occurs, we designate it as being “Exposed to Eviction.”  The “Exposed to Eviction” counts include the instances of “Experienced Eviction.” The “Eviction Rate” is the ratio of “Experienced Eviction” to the total number of students in the district.

While an eviction filing does not mean that a family was removed from their dwelling, it does indicate that they were at risk of losing their home. Moving forward, we plan to use the eviction filing information as a measure of housing insecurity and economic stress. We will incorporate this metric when estimating models of student achievement growth during the pandemic, and absenteeism and student behavior after students returned to in-person learning. This will give us a sense of the degree to which external factors affected student performance in remote learning as well as the influence of housing and economic insecurity on achievement, engagement, and behavior once students returned to classrooms. Our findings will provide information to school districts and social-service providers on student exposure to economic stress so as to ensure that in-school supports and "wraparound" services are offered to students who need them the most.  

This blog was produced by Haigen Huang (Haigen.Huang@ed.gov), program officer at NCER.

A team at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) has been examining COVID-19 learning recovery in the state as part of their Using Longitudinal Data to Support State Education Policymaking project, which is part of the IES-funded RESTART network. In addition to the research, members of the team at NCDPI developed a toolkit to help local leaders make decisions about what programs to continue or discontinue in the face of the upcoming expiration of federal funding to help schools with learning recovery post-pandemic. Through their work in the Office of Learning and Research (OLR) and the Division of Innovation at NCDPI, Rachel Wright-Junio, Jeni Corn, and Andrew Smith are responsible for managing statewide programs, conducting research on innovative teaching practices, and sharing insights using modern data analysis and visualization techniques. In this guest blog, they describe the need for the toolkit, how they developed it, how it is being used, and next steps.

Rachel Wright-Junio is the director of the Office of Learning and Research (OLR) at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI); Jeni Corn is the director of research and evaluation in OLR; and Andrew Smith is the deputy state superintendent in the NCDPI Division of Innovation.

Contact Rachel Wright-Junio at Rachel.WrightJunio@dpi.nc.gov for the webinar recording or copies of the slide deck from the in-person sessions.

This guest blog was produced by Corinne Alfeld (Corinne.Alfeld@ed.gov), NCER Program Officer.