In February, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) lost about 90 percent of its staff and $900 million in active contracts. Sarah Siegal, a leading researcher working with Instructure, said even educators who benefit most from it don’t always understand the weight of that loss.
She said a professor pointed out to her recently: “You cut cancer research, and the public is in the street saying, ‘We can’t lose this.’ And where are the teachers for education research?” she said. “How can we make sure we have that support going forward if we do get the opportunity to rebuild? Make sure the public and the teachers and those using educational research also understand that value.”
In the face of uncertainty, the panel of researchers, entrepreneurs and former government officials reflected on why education research matters, and what the field needs to keep or change going forward.
Mark Schneider, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former director of the IES from 2018 to 2024, highlighted two models for education research to reflect on: the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and the National Center for Education Research (NCER). Both are IES programs, but SBIR is more focused on technology prototypes where NCER is focused on education practices, policies and systems, and Schneider said the funding systems differed, too.
“The NCER business model was five years, $5 million and failure,” he said. “And once these grants were made, there was no way to stop them.”
Schneider called this out during his leadership tenure, noting that NCER and its special education research counterpart funded 450 projects testing the effects of various learning interventions on student outcomes, and most of them found no impact.
Schneider said that the SBIR model — shorter-term grants with routine evaluations — better ensured that ineffective models don’t continue to receive funding. It also leverages markets to scale education solutions, a historical challenge in education.
Julia Winter, a former high school chemistry teacher turned entrepreneur, said SBIR funding changed her life. After teaching for over 20 years, she decided to pivot to the ed-tech world. Her company, Alchemie, used a series of SBIR grants to develop accessible digital learning tools for teaching chemistry and math, including innovations for blind and low-vision students. Winter has since worked with major textbook publishers like Wiley and McGraw-Hill.
“When I started using the word commercialization, people looked at me like, ‘What planet are you on, buddy?’ because that's not what we do, right?” Schneider said. “Well, tell me what the best route to scaling is, if not commercialization.”
Academics aren’t traditionally incentivized to carry out research that can be scaled and used, which leads to tools that may not be relevant to teachers’ real-world challenges, Siegal said. However, SBIR and the Education Innovation and Research (EIR) program helped scale her reading research at Florida State University into a nationally used product that linked evidence with tools.
When thinking about how to scale up research and tools moving forward, Bror Saxberg, learning science expert and founder of LearningForce LLC, used the analogy of civil engineering and building bridges.
“If you think about a civil engineer, they do not copy and paste bridges from one river to another river,” he said. “Instead, they study the context really deeply: What’s going on with the river bank? What’s going on with the geology? What’s the use of this bridge?”
Then, engineers use components to construct a bridge that works for that context, and add ways to measure the effectiveness and wear and tear over time.
Panelists said effective scaling in education will require a similar understanding of context, rather than advocating for a one-size-fits-all approach.
Despite the near collapse of institutions like IES, panelists remained cautiously optimistic about rebuilding. Saxberg said learning research and development has congressional support across party lines.
“Those on the left were very excited about opportunities working with marginalized communities. ... Folks more on the right were thinking about workforce and beating China,” he said. “So, that’s a reason for optimism. It’s not the same as a guarantee or even a question of calendar, like when could that come back.”
Panelists said optimism must be paired with urgency.
“If we don't have that vision, if we don't have that end state in mind, we’re just going to blow it,” Schneider said. “Whatever money we get, it’ll just be wasted on $100 million of 40 one-off projects.”
