This primer summarizes the Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA), the Educational Technical Assistance Act (ETAA), and the National Assessment of Educational Progress Authorization Act (NAEPAA). The report is organized in a manner that aligns with P.L. 107-279, the law that enacted the three acts. The ESRA authorizes much of the federal…

The State NAEP program only reports the mean achievement estimate of a subgroup within a given state if it samples at least 62 students who identify with the subgroup. Since some subgroups of students constitute small proportions of certain states' general student populations, these low-incidence groups of students are seldom sufficiently sampled…

Purpose: Writing is an essential skill that secondary students need to establish for success in their further education, careers, and lives. However, most secondary students in the United States do not achieve the level of writing proficiency expected to ensure academic and future success. One approach that is emerging more in the research…

The science of reading has captured the attention of educators, policy makers, and the public. Elfrieda H. Hiebert recounts some of what she's learned from her recent exploration of the topic. She has found that research evidence tends to fall into three categories: research that provides unequivocal conclusions, research that holds promise for…

It is a much-lamented fact that research with the potential to inform or influence education policy instead remains policy inert. There are many reasons for this frustrating state of affairs, including a lack of strategic thinking on the part of researchers on how to successfully accomplish outreach--as opposed to communication with peers…

Money matters in education, especially for students from families that are struggling financially. Increasing school funding not only leads to improved school completion rates and higher achievement in low-income school districts, but over the long-term it can increase educational attainment, wages, and family incomes for children from low-income…

The racial achievement gap is one of the most persistent and pervasive issues in educational research. Unfortunately, the current research on Black student achievement lacks empirical studies that address the academic strengths and challenges facing Black girls. Specifically, there is a dearth of resources in the form of books, articles, and…

School District Effectiveness Research (SDER) works to identify unusually effective organizations for in-depth qualitative study that significantly outperform peer districts over multiple years. Yet, critiques of SDER include a focus on cross-sectional data, individual states, and percent proficient metrics. Here, we analyze the Stanford Education…

The Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA, Title I of P.L. 107-279) established the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) as an independent research arm of the Department of Education (ED). The IES Director, appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serves a six-year term and is advised by a technical panel composed…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) program periodically conducts national-level assessments of student achievement in geography. In July 2019, the National Assessment Governing Board announced a decision to eliminate geography, economics, arts, and foreign language assessments from the NAEP testing schedule through 2029. In…

Through a synthesis of test publisher norms and national longitudinal data sets, this study provides new national norms of academic growth in K-12 reading and math to help reinterpret conventional effect sizes in time units. We propose "d'," a time-indexed-effect-size metric to estimate how long it would take for an "untreated"…

On September 22, 2017, the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) and the National Center for Education Research (NCER) at the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) convened a group of experts in policy, practice, and research related to Career and Technical Education (CTE). The goal of the meeting was to seek input from…

The United States and much of the world is struggling with what "education" and being "educated" mean. Daily media are replete with debates on issues ranging from gender and class rights to the ideological and practical purpose of education. Prominent among these debates are discussions about whether education should be geared…

As the United States continues to grow and the composition of its population shifts, expanding opportunity and reducing barriers to education must be a national priority. An essential first step toward greater educational equality is a deeper understanding of the fundamental changes in the demographic composition of the nation. Consider, for…

The Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-279) created the National Board for Education Sciences (NBES) to serve as an advisory board to the Director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) within the U.S. Department of Education. Among the duties listed in the Education Sciences Reform Act, the Board is required to submit the…