IES Blog

As a federal agency committed to advancing knowledge and innovation, IES recognizes just how critical it is to invest in the next generation of researchers in the education sciences. Since NCSER was established in 2006, we have funded a total of 86 postdocs and 37 early career scholars through our training programs. These investigators have gone on to produce notable accomplishments, including now-seminal research articles and research projects funded through our main research competitions, all while pushing the field of special education in new and important ways. The time is right to expand this investment further to bring scholars into the NCSER community even earlier in their research careers.

This fall, NCSER is launching its first grant competition for doctoral students: the Special Education Dissertation Research Fellowship Program (ALN 84.324G). This competition will provide up to eight advanced doctoral students with a 1-year fellowship of up to $50,000 to support the completion of their dissertation research and to participate in IES-related training. The goal of the fellowship is to broaden opportunities for emerging researchers to engage with IES and to prepare them to conduct high-quality research focused on learners with or at risk for disabilities. By providing financial support and resources during the dissertation phase, we hope to empower these emerging researchers to tackle new and pressing challenges in the field of special education.

Our inaugural competition focuses on four areas that have, to date, been underrepresented in NCSER’s funding portfolio—education systems, postsecondary education, educational technologies, and low-incidence disabilities. Each of these areas holds immense potential for impact, and we are prioritizing them through our other funding avenues. Our FY25 Special Education Research Grants competition (ALN 84.324A) focuses explicitly on education systems.  To establish more robust programs of research in the areas of postsecondary education and educational technologies, we launched a Research and Development (R&D) Center on postsecondary education and the AI Institute for Exceptional Education, both in FY23. We continue to explore ways to spur additional research investments focused on low-incidence disabilities.  

By making a concerted effort across our training programs, research grants, and special initiatives, we aim to encourage the fields of early intervention and special education to explore areas where we believe there are opportunities for groundbreaking research. We also hope this new initiative will continue NCSER’s work to foster a vibrant community of scholars committed to leveraging rigorous research to improve outcomes for students with disabilities. We look forward to seeing the impactful research that emerges from this fellowship and to working with the talented individuals who receive these dissertation fellowships.

This blog was written by Nathan Jones, NCSER commissioner, and Courtney Pollack and Katie Taylor, NCSER program officers.

As you begin the new school year, consider how you can use the following evidence-based practices and resources to improve literacy and mathematics instruction in your school!

Evidence-Based Strategies for Improving Student Literacy in Grades PK-9

Learning to read, and then reading to learn, are critical both to student success—both in and out of the classroom. 

Set our youngest learners on the path to success

Caregivers and educators can support early literacy by:

• Intentionally planning activities to build children’s vocabulary and language;
• Building children’s knowledge of letters and sounds; and
• Using shared book reading to develop children’s language, knowledge of print features, and knowledge of the world.

Learn More

Learn more about these recommendations in the What Works Clearinghouse’s Preparing Young Children for School Practice Guide.

Use evidence-based literacy practices to support foundational literacy

Educators can do so by:

• Teaching students to decode works, analyze word parts, and write and recognize words; and
• Helping parents to become involved in their child’s literacy development, including incorporating activities into daily routines like grocery shopping or chores around the house. 

Learn More

Learn more about these recommendations in the What Works Clearinghouse’s Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through Third Grade Practice Guide.

Also check out the Regional Educational Laboratories’ Teachers Guides to Supporting Family Involvement in Foundational Reading Skills. 

Provide struggling readers additional opportunities for practice

Evidence-based strategies include:

• Offering readers the chance to make sense of challenging (“stretch”) text that will expose them to complex ideas and information; and
• Providing purposeful fluency-building activities to help students read effortlessly, including reading with appropriate expression, pitch, tempo, and pauses (“prosody”).

Learn More

Learn more about these recommendations in the What Works Clearinghouse’s Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4-9 Practice Guide.

Evidence-Based Strategies for Teaching Mathematics in Grades PK-9

Evidence-based practices in teaching math can support every student in becoming more mathematically literate. In addition to promoting student achievement, proficiency in math can provide students the greatest possible opportunity for additional education and high-quality careers.

Set our youngest learners on the path to success

Caregivers and educators can support early math learning by: 

• Providing intentional instruction to build children’s understanding of mathematical ideas and skills, and
• Engaging children in conversations about mathematical ideas and support them in using mathematical language.

Learn More

Learn more about these recommendations in the What Works Clearinghouse’s Preparing Young Children for School Practice Guide.

Also check out the Regional Educational Laboratories’ Teaching Math to Young Children for Families and Caregivers.

Use evidence-based practice to support elementary school students who may be struggling to develop math skills

Educators can do so by:

• Using number lines to build students’ understanding of grade-level concepts underlying mathematical operations and to prepare them for advanced math; 
• Using well-chosen concrete and semi-concrete representations to support students’ learning of mathematical concepts and procedures; and
• Regularly including timed activities as one way to build fluency in mathematics. 

Learn More

Learn more about these recommendations in the What Works Clearinghouse’s Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics: Intervention in the Elementary Grades Practice Guide.

Improve algebra knowledge in middle school and high school through evidence-based teaching strategies

Evidence-based strategies include:

• Teaching students to intentionally choose from alternative algebraic strategies when solving problems; 
• Teaching the students to use the structure of algebraic representations; and
• Using solved problems to engage students in analyzing algebraic reasoning and strategies.

Learn More

Learn more about these recommendations in the Teaching Strategies for Improving Algebra Knowledge in Middle and High School Students Practice Guide.

General Strategies to Improve Student Learning

Whether you’re teaching literacy, math,  or another subject, remember the following tips that can support effective instruction when applied in developmentally appropriate ways:

• Space learning over time.
• Interleave worked example solutions with problem-solving exercises.
• Combine graphics with verbal descriptions.
• Connect and integrate abstract and concrete representations of concepts.
• Use quizzes to re-expose students to key content and promote learning.
• Ask deep explanatory questions.

Learn More

Learn more about these recommendations in the What Works Clearinghouse’s Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning Practice Guide.

Calling all education leaders and educators who teach mathematics! We hope you are enjoying your well-earned summer break. We at the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) would like to share our heartfelt gratitude for your dedication and hard work serving our nation’s children. Teachers, we know what it takes to create engaging lesson plans that meet the needs of diverse learners, provide academic and emotional support to your students, and foster a sense of community and belonging in your classroom. Education leaders, we also know that you are working to prepare educators for this coming school year.

Since 2008, NCSER has funded a range of studies focused on improving mathematics instruction in areas such as understanding of whole numbers, fractions, word problem solving, and algebraic reasoning, which are the building blocks of success in secondary mathematics and beyond. Based on what we're finding through our funded projects, we would like to share some resources with you to support work to improve mathematics instruction and learning—especially for students with or at risk for disabilities that affect mathematics—in the 2024-25 school year.

WWC Mathematics Practice Guides

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guides are written specifically for educators and summarize interventions and instructional practices for which there is the strongest evidence for improving outcomes for learners. The following WWC Practice Guides can be useful to support educators in strengthening mathematics instruction:

• Teaching Math to Young Children
• Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics: Intervention in the Elementary Grades
• Improving Mathematical Problem Solving in Grades 4 to 8
• Teaching Strategies for Improving Algebra Knowledge in Middle and High School Students
• Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning

Evidence-Based Math Interventions

Below are five examples of NCSER-funded interventions that have demonstrated improved outcomes in mathematics for learners with or at risk for a disability that affects mathematics.

• Numbershire is a digital math game with an intensive focus on critical whole number concepts and skills for students in kindergarten through second grade. Published findings from an efficacy study indicate significant effects favoring the learners using Numbershire on proximal measures of whole-number concepts and skills.
• Whole Number Foundations Level K is a kindergarten math intervention that provides in-depth instruction on critical whole number concepts, including counting and cardinality, operations and algebraic thinking, and number operations in base 10. Published findings from a replication efficacy trial of the intervention, originally called ROOTS, showed that students who received ROOTS in a small group of 2 or 5 students outperformed students in the control group.
• Whole Number Foundations Level 1 is a first grade intervention aimed at developing understanding of whole numbers. Published findings from an efficacy trial of the intervention, initially called FUSION, showed a significant effect on improving student math performance. The strongest effects on student outcomes at a follow-up assessment the next school year were among smaller groups of students (2:1) compared to the slightly larger groups.
• Pirate Math Equation Quest is a third grade intervention tested using two version of the tutoring program—one using equations to solve word problems and one using word-problem instruction alone. Published findings showed that students in both intervention groups significantly outperformed students in the control group with large effect sizes. At follow up (grade 4), only students in the group focusing on using equations (pre-algebra reasoning) significantly outperformed the control group on a measure of word problem solving.
• Super Solvers is a fraction intervention for grades 4-5 delivered in small groups of students with or at risk for math learning disabilities. The intervention was tested with interleaved calculation instruction (learning two or more related concepts or skills, instead of focusing exclusively on one concept or skill) and blocked calculation instruction (learning one concept or skill at a time). Published findings showed that students in the intervention group significantly outperformed the control group. At follow up a year later, the two intervention groups still significantly outperformed the control group, but the group with interleaved calculation instruction made greater gains than the blocked calculations group.

IES Math Summit 2023

In 2023, IES held a Math Summit  focused on evidence-based instructional practices, including presentations by some of our NCSER grantees who have developed and tested interventions to improve outcomes for learners with or at risk for disabilities. Below, we share links to these recorded sessions to support your professional learning.

Strategies for Differentiating Instruction for Diverse Learners

• (Grades Pre-K-3) Strategies for Differentiating Instruction for Diverse Learners, Dr. Lynn Fuchs, Vanderbilt University
• (Grades PreK-3) Education Technology as a Tool for Effective Differentiation, Dr. Nancy Nelson, Boston University

High-Dose Tutoring and Other Academic Recovery Strategies

• (Grades PreK-3) Utilizing the Curriculum Research Framework to Develop, Test, and Explore the Impacts of Interventions, Dr. Ben Clarke, University of Oregon
• (Grades PreK-3) Making Mathematics Interventions Work for Struggling Learners: 2021 What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide, Dr. Lynn Fuchs, Vanderbilt University
• (Grades 4–8) A Fraction Sense Intervention Grounded in the Science of Learning, Dr. Nancy Jordan, University of Delaware

Language and Mathematics, Including Support for English Learners

• (Grades 4-8) Math Supports for Students with Reading Difficulties, Dr. Steve Ritter, Carnegie Learning

Increasing Opportunities to Learn and Raising Expectations for All

• (Grades 9-12) Seeing Growth in Algebra, Dr. Anne Foegen, University of Minnesota

Thank you for your dedication and commitment to our nation’s learners. We hope these resources will energize you for the exciting challenges that lie ahead.

This blog was produced by Sarah Brasiel (Sarah.Brasiel@ed.gov), a program officer for the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics portfolio in the National Center for Special Education Research.

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.

Removing barriers to college access and success begins well before the first college application is submitted. It starts with high schools offering advanced courses, work-based learning (WBL), and career programs, giving students a clear roadmap toward higher education and career readiness. While recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that 73 percent of public high schools offer some type of advanced academic course, and 86 percent offer career and technical education (CTE), not all students, especially those from historically underserved backgrounds, have equal access to these resources and opportunities. Improving college access, enrollment, and completion for all students can help address the inequities we see in higher education and the workforce and facilitate equal opportunities for all students to achieve economic stability.

Many policymakers and educators are focused on ensuring that students are ready for college and careers when they graduate from high school. RELs work in partnership with states and districts to 1) conduct original high-quality research, 2) provide training, coaching, and technical support, and 3) disseminate high-quality research findings on the topic of college and career readiness.

In this fourth installation of our blog series, we share how two of IES’s Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs) are making a difference in college and career success.

REL Northeast & Islands: Preparing Students for Success after High School

REL Northeast & Islands is partnering with education leaders In Vermont, Rhode Island, and New York to support college and career readiness initiatives.

Facing an aging workforce and stagnant postsecondary enrollment, Vermont has launched a statewide initiative to offer students multiple pathways to achieve education and career success. With support from REL Northeast & Islands through the Partnership to Strengthen Flexible Pathways for College and Career Success, Vermont is assessing the quality and completeness of the data they currently collect about program access, participation, and success and exploring how that data can be used to identify inequities and barriers. REL Northeast & Islands supported a series of meetings that bring together Vermont Agency of Education staff from the divisions of Data and Analysis and Student Pathways and work-based learning coordinators from comprehensive high schools and regional Career and Technical Education Centers to identify and address opportunity gaps in access to and participation in these various pathways, particularly for students from historically underserved groups and those in rural locations. REL Northeast & Islands also supported partners as they consider developing policies and guidance to improve data collection about student CTE and WBL participation and success.

In Rhode Island, REL Northeast & Islands’ Partnership to Support Early College Opportunities is studying whether and how early college opportunities help bring the state closer to achieving its postsecondary enrollment goals. The REL Northeast & Islands team supported school and postsecondary leaders and counselors by conducting coaching sessions to increase school and district teams’ understanding of their early college data, setting goals for improvement, and supporting the use of Rhode Island Department of Education’s data dashboards. Through 2024, REL Northeast & Islands is also conducting an applied research study to investigate the cost-effectiveness of three state programs that help students earn college credits during high school: dual enrollment, concurrent enrollment, and advanced placement programs.  “Our Rhode Island partners are very interested in understanding the results of these programs and whether they work for all students,” explains REL research scientist and partnership co-lead Dr. Katherine Shields. “So in this study, we are looking at whether the effects of the programs differ for students who started high school academically proficient and those who did not.”

And in New York, REL Northeast & Islands just established a new partnership with state education leaders,  the Partnership to Support Equity in Early College Programs, to address a persistent decline in postsecondary enrollment and support equity in early college programs. A study with the New York Department of Education will help New York policymakers and education leaders better understand inequities in access and enrollment and outcomes experienced by participating students. 

REL West: Using Evidence-Based Strategies to Reengage and Support Adults with Some College but No Credential

In addition to identifying evidence to support college and career readiness through collaboration with K–12 agencies, the RELs are working with postsecondary institutions to extend this support. For example, to re-engage Californians who have some college experience but did not complete their credentials, REL West has established the California Adult College Completion Partnership, comprising six higher education institutions in northern California. Using a continuous improvement model, REL West is helping these institutions implement strategies to re-engage these students and encourage them to return to college and complete credentialing. The partnership identified strategies that fall under three main buckets: communications and outreach, reenrollment and onboarding, and student supports. REL West is providing tailored coaching support to help each of the six participating institutions identify, implement, and test at least one of these strategies.

“The work of the REL allowed us to refocus the efforts to identify and re-engage students at Shasta College who completed some courses but have no credentials. We were also able to add capacity to the efforts with other stakeholders on our campus. This resulted in an increase in enrollment by near completers. Also, involvement in the cohort has strengthened our partnerships with other colleges in the region, and we look forward to continuing our joint efforts after the completion of the project.”
—Kate Mahar, Associate Vice President and Strategic Initiatives at Shasta College and Executive Director of Shasta College Attainment and Innovation Lab for Equity (SCAILE)

How RELs are Contributing to the Research Base

RELs collaborate with school districts, state departments of education, and other education partners to help generate evidence and contribute to the research base through rigorous inquiry and data analysis. The two studies highlighted below focus on college and career readiness and both meet the What Works Clearinghouse standards with reservations, with at least one statistically significant finding and moderate evidence of effectiveness.

REL Central: The Impact of Career and Technical Education on Postsecondary Outcomes in Nebraska and South Dakota

Education leaders in Nebraska and South Dakota partnered with REL Central to examine how completing a sequence of career and technical education courses in high school affects students' rates of on-time high school graduation and their rates of postsecondary education enrollment and completion within two and five years.

REL Northeast & Islands: The Effects of Accelerated College Credit Programs on Educational Attainment in Rhode Island

This study examined participation in accelerated college credit programs dual enrollment, concurrent enrollment, and Advanced Placement courses in Rhode Island high schools to understand their effects on educational attainment. This video, What are the effects of taking college-level courses in high school?, shares findings from the report.

Learn More about the College and Career Work of the RELs

The examples shared here illustrate the varied support RELs can provide across data systems, access, and analysis, cost effectiveness, and support for research and development. In addition to the work highlighted in this blog, multiple RELs across the program are working hard to support college and career readiness and success in their regions. Learn more about this work by visiting:

REL Appalachia

Strengthening Students’ Preparation for College and Careers

Developing Resilient and Supportive Community Colleges

REL Central

Supporting Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness of Students in Kansas

REL Mid-Atlantic

Improving Post-High School Transitions for Students with Disabilities in Maryland

REL Midwest

Employability Skills Partnership

REL Northwest

Portland High School Graduation

REL Southeast

Diversifying the Teacher Pipeline with Historically Black Colleges and Universities

The Regional Educational Labs (REL) program, operated by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES), supports state education agencies, schools and school districts, and institutions of higher education nationwide in using data and evidence-based practice to improve opportunities and outcome for learners. Operating in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Territories and Freely Associated States of the Pacific region, the REL program brings together the expertise of local communities, top-tier education researchers, and education scientists at IES’s National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) to address the most vexing problems of education policy and practice in states and regions—on demand and free of charge.

This blog was written by Laura Dyer, NCEE Knowledge Use Dissemination contract