Improving education through developing state and local research and development

As the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee considers reauthorizing the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA), it should leverage this opportunity to build the capacity of states, not just the federal government, to be leaders in research and development (R&D). Specifically, Congress should support a competitive grant program for states to build their research and development capacity. 

For students — and teachers — education research and development is not an academic topic. Stagnant math and reading scores shows that the nation simply doesn’t know enough of what works to raise student outcomes, and Covid-related school closures made it clear that most school systems don’t have the capacity to innovate at scale. 

Historically, federal agencies like the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Science Foundation, have been at the forefront of education R&D. 

Yet, there has been a persistent divide between federal research and the classrooms where significant research findings should translate into improvements in teaching and learning. By establishing a state infrastructure grant program in the ESRA update, Congress can help bridge that gap and ensure that the government’s investment in research pays off in real-world outcomes for kids. In short, think Title II but for R&D.

R&D activity at the state level is important because it will help administrators and teachers engage with R&D. Although IES’ What Works Clearinghouse was designed to put high-quality research at the fingertips of teachers and school leaders, research shows that only 17 percent of them use it regularly. The lack of engagement with strong research findings contributes to low uptake in new innovations and low confidence in their applicability. Solutions are more likely to be insensitive and ill-fitted to individual student and geographic contexts. 

Despite the need for a more state-centered approach, the capacity at the state and local level for R&D innovation is rare. Some efforts have been made to fund state and local R&D, through, for example, the Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) program and the Regional Education Laboratories (RELs). 

These programs have led to some successes in collecting data and generating evidence, but much of the data has yet to be taken advantage of due to a lack of capacity at the state level. Due to a lack of bandwidth, current research capacity at state education departments and in school districts entails little more than tracking and reporting accountability. As education expert Arthur Sheekey puts it, “[S]tate education agencies do not have direct access to the expert talent and technical assistance that are needed to analyze the complex body of school- and student-performance data.”

As Congress takes a new look at ESRA, it should respond to the state R&D capacity challenge by authorizing and funding a matching competitive grant program for states to engage in education R&D. Such a program would allow state departments of education, school districts, or consortiums of both to develop contextualized strategies to advance education R&D. 

State and local applicants would propose capacities to improve education in their state or district, which might include leveraging large-scale data or developing new approaches or supports for instruction that take into account the context for students, teachers, and their communities. The program would incentivize them to collaborate with community-based organizations, educators, school leaders, and families when deciding on the R&D capacities they wish to enhance and why. 

With governors in the driver’s seat, a state R&D grant program would also facilitate the development or implementation of infrastructure to support diverse approaches specifically tailored to state and local contexts, including building research-practice partnerships, recruiting research and data talent into their agencies, and investing in their own R&D priorities to develop or implement more evidence-based solutions. California’s Learning Lab, a state initiative that funds projects leveraging technology tools and the science of learning to close equity gaps, offers a model for this type of program.

To encourage informed-risk, high-reward R&D at the state and district level, this program would give bonus points to applicants committed to using an Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) approach. This would entail multi-disciplinary collaboration and flexible, targeted investments in projects with high potential to positively transform aspects of learning and teaching in a local context. 

A ground-up approach to innovation would allow for a wealth of pilot programming to see what works for whom and when, and scale it up in new contexts while also developing the capacity of state and local leaders to meet their own education R&D needs rather than being wholly reliant on the federal government.

Education R&D must be led and driven locally and by those who are closest to the community’s teaching and learning challenges. For R&D to have a meaningful impact on students, a diverse set of community members — educators, parents, students, school district and state leaders — must have a seat at the table.The ESRA update can welcome these critical stakeholders into the R&D process by establishing a grant program that facilitates state capacity-building. With this approach, the federal government can close the gap between research and what actually takes place in the classroom.

Ulrich Boser is the founder and CEO of the Learning Agency, which seeks to improve education delivery systems.