How to Reimagine the Institute of Education Sciences (IES)

In September 2025, the U.S Department of Education (USED) posted a Request for Information (RFI) seeking public input on how the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) “can modernize its programs, processes, and priorities to better serve the needs of the field and American students.”

New Classrooms submitted a response to the RFI, which you can read in its entirety below. It includes three core recommendations:

1. Reimagine the National Center for Education Research (NCER) as an ARPA-Style Center to Develop New Approaches to Teaching and Learning
2. Create and Manage Grant Programs within NCER Focused on Developing Transformative Solutions that Meet State and School Needs
3. Ensure the Successful Adoption of New Tools and Models Developed by NCER

You can read more about our perspective on federal investment in education research & development here.

Docket ID ED-2025-IES-0844
October 15, 2025

Dr. Matthew Soldner:

On behalf of New Classrooms Innovation Partners (New Classrooms), we are pleased to submit these comments in response to the U.S. Department of Education’s (USED) Request for Information (RFI) (Docket ID ED-2025-IES-0844) to guide the agency’s efforts to redesign the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). We are strongly in support of modernizing IES to focus on the development of new approaches to teaching and learning that are built for the future of school.

New Classrooms is a national nonprofit on a mission to empower schools to move beyond the limits of the traditional classroom experience to ensure that students are set up for lifelong success. We believe that our nation’s central approach to schooling – which is oriented around an individual teacher guiding the instruction of a cohort of same-aged students through a uniform curriculum – has made it impossible to help each student reach his or her full potential. As a result, we are dedicated to making a shift to student-centered learning that reimagines the classroom to better support teachers to meet the unique needs of each of their students.

In particular, we are focused on building capacity and supporting the demand for innovative learning models, an approach to learning that looks beyond the age-based classroom to instead emphasize mastery in a subject. As  holistic, school-based programs, these models integrate teachers and technology so that schools can systematically support a personalized approach to education for its students. They can be subject-specific, grade span-specific, or apply more broadly throughout a school. Innovative learning models are developed by organizations that leverage research and development and then partner with schools to support high-quality implementation. 

In recent years, IES has made great strides in re-envisioning the role of federal education research and development (R&D). We applaud the establishment of the Accelerate, Transform, and Scale (ATS) initiative through the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2023, which aims to create innovative, scalable solutions leveraged from basic research and “improve education outcomes for all learners and eliminate persistent achievement and attainment gaps.” Congress also continues to show bipartisan interest in modernizing the agency. Most recently, the House FY26 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill included report language that would direct IES to create a new grant opportunity for the development of innovative learning models.

It is critical that IES increase its commitment to the promising initial progress of ATS and focus even more on the development of breakthrough technologies, new pedagogical approaches, and innovative learning models. To do this, IES can be strengthened in the following ways:

1. Reimagine the National Center for Education Research (NCER) as an ARPA-Style Center to Develop New Approaches to Teaching and Learning
2. Create and Manage Grant Programs within NCER Focused on Developing Transformative Solutions that Meet State and School Needs
3. Ensure the Successful Adoption of New Tools and Models Developed by NCER

Focus on Development

We strongly encourage IES to redesign NCER as an Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA)-style center that is focused on not just research, but the development of new approaches to teaching and learning. Unlike in sectors such as energy, defense, and healthcare, there is not a robust and sustainably funded R&D ecosystem at the federal level focused on building for the future in education. For example, while the Department of Defense spent $90 billion on R&D in FY24, USED funded less than $446 million. The federal government has met the needs of the moment in these other industries by investing in early stage R&D to rigorously test, develop, and deploy life-changing breakthrough innovations.

Redesigning NCER to focus on development can serve as a much-needed bridge between learning science research and classroom practice. Instead of expecting educators to parse and apply research themselves, IES can play a catalytic role to ensure that the tools and models reaching schools are both transformative and deeply grounded in what works.

Learn from the Successes of DARPA 

Modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NCER should support high-risk, high-reward projects that require a more nimble and responsive program management approach than what is currently in place. Openness to new ideas, risk-taking, and continuous learning are essential elements of DARPA innovation. Like DARPA, NCER should be oriented toward ambitious ideas across the academic, public, and private sectors. Specifically, NCER should fund projects developed by innovative organizations, selected based on their potential to create dramatic breakthroughs in education, ensuring the outcomes for students are at the center of the work. Hiring program managers that are aligned to this new vision of NCER and foster a collective sense of both innovation and urgency is also crucial.

Create Systems for Selecting Strong R&D Partners to Ensure Quality Control

Ensuring that the new models and tools that are developed are built with quality is vital to drive both impact and public trust in these kinds of investments. At the same time, well-intentioned efforts to drive quality can inadvertently stifle creativity, over-empower bureaucrats, and prevent breakthroughs from evolving. The reason that there’s been so little transformative K-12 innovation has less to do with the absence of quality control and more to do with the lack of R&D capital, the lack of creative talent and entrepreneurship, rigid educational policies oriented around the current paradigm of school, and bureaucratic inertia that keeps the status quo in place.  

To balance both the need for quality and for creative dynamism, we encourage IES to:

Redesign Existing Grant Evaluation Process

Finally, in order for NCER to support the development of transformative approaches to teaching and learning, IES should redesign the existing evaluation process for development grant programs. When grant programs base early stage evaluation of a project on quasi- and fully implemented studies or tie it to annual, grade-level summative assessments and other traditional means, it reinforces the existing school model that assumes all students are ready to learn the same thing at the same time. This limits the ability to shape program designs that will rethink school. 

Instead, IES should ensure that evidence and evaluation – particularly for early stage grants – are centered on the Department of Education’s tier four level of evidence: demonstrating a rationale. IES can use the criteria from tier four to ensure that new designs are novel as long as they are consistent with the theoretical and empirical findings from research that will inform the evidence base. If early incentives are not aligned with the treatment, organizations will be motivated to continue to develop products oriented towards immediate market-fit and profit motive. Later stages of an innovative learning model grant program can then measure longer term impact more rigorously through evaluations like quasi-experimental studies.

Create Strong Development Grant Program Priorities through NCER

With the correct federal R&D infrastructure in place, a shift toward student-centered learning also needs a sustainable investment in the development of transformative solutions. NCER, as an ARPA-style ED center, must create and fund grant opportunities that are not only bold but also give space for a fundamental rethinking of our current education system. This includes the development of new learning models in different subjects and grade-spans, with varying levels of investment based on different stages of evidence of impact and scale. All grant programs should seek to harness breakthroughs in brain science, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and other advances in technology that are continually opening up new possibilities for student learning. 

Ensure Projects Funded through Grant Programs Include State, District, and School Partners

States generally have neither the capacity nor the internal structures to reimagine learning, particularly if it involves R&D or sophisticated uses of technology. Nor do individual districts, schools, and teachers, who simply cannot be expected to design the classroom of tomorrow while also managing the classroom of today. However, it is essential that these actors play a role in the development of any product funded by NCER to ensure that they are serving real-life classroom needs. 

The role of entrepreneurs is to:

The role of states is to:

The role of districts and states is to:

Examples of Strong Grant Program Priorities

“To ensure students maximize their potential and meet the needs of the 21st century economy, a portion of these funds should be directed to support a new funding opportunity to develop innovative learning models that improve student outcomes. Innovative learning models are bundles of integrated tools, resources, systems, and teaching practices that enable schools to provide their students with individualized learning experiences through different learning modalities. The Director shall make awards for both early-phase and mid- phase development, implementation, feasibility testing, and rigorous evaluation of an innovative learning model. Eligible entities for the award include innovative learning model providers that partner with schools and school communities to support the implementation of such models, while sharing accountability for student outcomes…”

Create Viable Paths to Commercialization that Protect the Transformative Intent of Funded Projects

Today, the profit motive undermines innovation in K-12. In general, most schools and districts express demand for traditional K-12 products (e.g. textbooks, workbooks). Publishers and vendors then build products to meet that demand, and see only economic risk in deviating from it. Implementing these products typically require no meaningful changes to the classroom and as a result, student impact and achievement are often secondary considerations. Vendors and entrepreneurs are perversely incentivized to increase sales/marketing capacity for these traditional products rather than invest in transformative solutions.   

There are at least two ways to correct for this misalignment through novel IES incentives:

Create Implementation Grants for Early Adopters 

The K-12 market is highly fragmented, and achieving successful scaling for new products requires understanding the impact of the new product in multiple settings, communicating the availability and benefits of the new products to schools, and then instituting specialized support structures for professional learning related to the new product. This is often impossible for education innovators to achieve on their own. Therefore, IES should fund implementation grants that incentivize early adopters of promising innovative education developments. 

Example of Implementation Grant Structure

H.R. 3250, the Developing and Advancing Innovative Learning Models Act, provides an example of how IES could ensure the effective scaling of new approaches to teaching and learning developed through NCER. The legislation, specifically focused on innovative learning models, would authorize a grant program to allow states to apply for federal funding to offset the cost of implementation at early-adopter schools. State entities that receive federal funding could then host a subgrant competition in which schools could access funding to support adoption-related costs of innovative learning models over a fixed period of time. Funding could also be used by state agencies to fund the administrative costs associated with overseeing, supporting, promoting, and evaluating the impact of innovative learning models. Researchers at IES would have an opportunity to measure the effectiveness of innovation strategies to maximize scale through implementation science These grants could be allocated by IES or other federal agency partners like the National Science Foundation (NSF) to leverage existing relationships with states and districts/schools.

Conclusion

Thank you again for providing us the opportunity to respond to the RFI on redesigning IES. We look forward to working with USED throughout this process. If you have questions or need any additional information, please contact Alexandra Morris, Deputy Director of Policy & Advocacy at New Classrooms, at amorris@newclassrooms.org.