Innovative Model Provider Letter Urging the Support of Development in AREA

This past December, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee introduced their long-awaited bill to reauthorize the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA). The Advancing Research in Education Act of 2023 (AREA) represents months of bipartisan work between the staff of Chairman Bernie Sanders and Ranking Member Bill Cassidy to modernize our current federal education research and development (R&D) programs to better support practitioners and students. New Classrooms had two initial concerns with the Chairman’s draft: an overly restrictive definition of “evidence-based” and a failure to support the “development” part of education R&D. While we are thankful that the Committee updated the original proposal to define evidence, it unfortunately still did not include an advanced education R&D program. 

New Classrooms, joined by nine other innovative model providers, wrote a letter to the HELP Committee ahead of the AREA markup, urging them to prioritize the development, not just the research, of breakthrough technologies, new pedagogical approaches, and innovative learning models that put students at the center of its work. Read the letter below.

Dear Chairman Sanders and Ranking Member Cassidy,

We write to commend the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) for working on a bipartisan basis to reauthorize the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA). As a group of education non-profit innovators who are actively engaged in building capacity and supporting demand for innovative learning models, we strongly believe in the need to modernize our current federal education research and development (R&D) programs to better support practitioners and students. We particularly appreciate the Committee’s updates to the original proposal to define and apply “evidence” and are supportive of this change. 

However, we remain concerned that this legislation still fails to support the “development” part of R&D and instead needs to add a program focused on this important work. Our organizations have had success in developing and implementing innovative learning models in many school communities across the county, but they simply cannot emerge at a scalable and transformational level without a strong public investment in education R&D. As currently drafted, the Advancing Research in Education Act of 2023 (AREA) would limit innovation and make research far less helpful to schools, particularly those looking to shift towards a student-centered approach to teaching and learning. 

HELP leadership can fix this issue by adding an authorization Advanced Education R&D program that builds on the current pilot underway at the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) that was established in the FY23 omnibus appropriations legislation. Currently, the ecosystem of providers developing innovative learning models that fall outside of the K-12 industrial paradigm is extremely limited. This program would help overcome current supply barriers – particularly for model providers focused on early-stage innovations – by prioritizing the development, not just the research, of breakthrough technologies, new pedagogical approaches, and innovative learning models that put students at the center of its work.