Who Does IES Want to Be When It Grows Up?

Authored by: Erin Higgins

As IES grows up, it shouldn't have to choose between being a scientist or an engineer. Its most impactful future lies in being both: an agency that seeks to understand the fundamental mechanisms that support education outcomes for students and that uses that knowledge to build the education experiences our students deserve to thrive in an ever-changing future.

As a mother of two, I both ask and frequently hear the question, What do you want to be when you grow up? I have learned that my kids’ answers change often, are sometimes completely unpredictable, and are a window into their developing minds. My seven-year-old’s most recent answer was: “I want to be the owner of a mall, so I can get everything for free!”

Kids’ answers to this question continue to morph and change because they are still learning about the world and exploring how they can show up best in it. As kids grow into young adults, their interests and career aspirations narrow, but they still have a lot to learn about who they are and how to apply their skills to make big impacts in their chosen profession.

Right now, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES)—the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education—is growing up and undergoing its own identity shift. IES was established in 2002, so if IES were a person, it would be a recent college graduate: knowledgeable and capable, but still fundamentally figuring out who it wants to be in the world and how it can make the biggest impact. 

The recently released report, Reimagining the Institute of Education Sciences, led by Amber Northern, impressively distills feedback from a wide range of stakeholders in the education field into a comprehensive set of recommendations designed to increase the impact of IES’s work and shape its new identity. The report’s main thesis is that the vision for IES is a good one, but just about everything about how IES does its work needs an overhaul. One of a small handful of bright spots highlighted in the report is the Accelerate, Transform, Scale (ATS) Initiative, which my team and I developed and led. So, not surprisingly, I have some thoughts about this proposed new identity for IES. 

Keeping with the IES-as-a-person analogy, in its younger days, IES was deeply committed to its identity as scientist. It focused heavily on theory-building and rigorous methodology. It sought to understand the how and why of learning and identify the components of the education system that support education outcomes. While this work was vital for building a knowledge base to inform policy and practice, it was not making consistent impacts on the education system. Over the years, different reasons as to why have been discussed – inadequate dissemination and engagement with education stakeholders, lack of alignment between research priorities and the needs of the education system, the pace of evidence-building, and relevance of the research to practical on-the-ground decisions and contexts. 

The ATS Initiative and its underlying programs were developed to address these different facets of the research-to-practice gap to bring evidence-based programs, policies, practices, and products to scale. The report rightly notes this and encourages IES to expand this initiative and to more broadly adopt new strategies to bring more relevance and practicality to its work. The report pushes IES, and specifically the work of the two research centers, the National Center for Education Research (NCER) and the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER), to take on the identity of solutions engineer tasked with:

• Product Engineering: Building and refining tools, programs, and policies.

• Program Evaluation: Quickly determining if a specific intervention "works" in the moment.

• Rapid-Cycle Innovation: Speeding up the timeline to keep pace with the private sector.

Going all in on the engineer identity is tempting, and an expansion of the initiative my team built would be a wonderful development. However, we lose something if we veer too much in this direction. IES was established as a science agency, and it should not lose that identity. Engineering-oriented initiatives like ATS will only work if IES continues to make substantial investments in scientific research about learning and education and then uses those insights to seed the next generation of innovation. We must expand the pipeline of R&D that IES invests in to include more applied R&D, not shift it completely. Without scientific theory, innovative solution ideas are just shots in the dark. 

Take the science of reading movement that the education research field uses as an example of research making a meaningful impact on practice. We have effective, evidence-based literacy programs and products today because the education research field, largely funded by IES, spent decades doing foundational R&D to understand how children learn to read. If we had only focused on engineering solutions or evaluating the specific products available twenty years ago, we never would have unlocked the breakthrough theories that are currently transforming reading outcomes for students. 

This balance between investing in foundational research and solutions engineering is even more important today as emerging AI-enabled technologies enter the classroom. For example, continued investment in the science of learning will be critical for identifying the ways that AI can make a positive difference for students and teachers and for designing high quality products that move the needle on education outcomes.  Key to ensuring IES implements this balance effectively is clear understanding and communication with the field about the relationship between different research methods and study goals to the evidence claims they support. 

As IES grows up, it shouldn't have to choose between being a scientist or an engineer. Its most impactful future lies in being both: an agency that seeks to understand the fundamental mechanisms that support education outcomes for students and that uses that knowledge to build the education experiences our students deserve to thrive in an ever-changing future.