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Strategic Objective
Research, Evaluation, and Use of Evidence
Strategic Objective
Progress Update
Systemic improvement requires research and evaluation so that decision makers at the national, state, and local levels have reliable evidence to inform their actions. While the Department’s research programs are its primary driver for learning what works, the Department also seeks to build evidence by incorporating grantee-led evaluations into other programs. Requiring that more discretionary grants build on and generate evidence of effectiveness will increase the likelihood that scarce program dollars have a positive impact on student outcomes. A list of evaluations completed in FY 2015, as well as a summary of other relevant upcoming evaluations, can be found in appendix E.
The Department’s Evidence Planning Group (EPG) continues to identify opportunities for discretionary grant programs to use evidence-related priorities or selection criteria in competitions. In FY 2015, a total of eight competitions in OII, OESE, and OPE encouraged evidence-based projects through eligibility requirements, competitive preference priorities, and selection criteria. In addition, nine competitions in OII, OESE, and OPE asked that applicants design evaluations of their proposed projects that will produce evidence. The Department surpassed the FY 2015 performance target for programs rewarding evidence in grant competitions. In addition, the EPG has met with each of the Department’s grant-making offices to discuss appropriate uses of evidence in FY 2016 competitions. The Department projects that over 10 competitions will reward evidence in their FY 2016 competitions.
The metric above tracks the Department’s progress in incentivizing applicants to build on evidence of “what works” and to generate new evidence in the course of their grants. Two other metrics—one related to the WWC and one to ERIC—track the Department’s progress in reviewing studies of education effectiveness against rigorous standards and in making high-quality education research widely available and easily accessible. The Department believes that progress in these metrics will contribute to the information flow that is essential to promoting promising areas of education research and development.
The WWC reviews and summarizes studies of the effectiveness of education interventions. During FY 2015, the WWC surpassed the Department’s target by reviewing more than 600 studies. Reviews of studies submitted by applicants to Department grant competitions contributed to the larger-than-anticipated number of studies reviewed. In addition to its regular reviews of IES-funded research studies, in FY 2015 the WWC also began to review studies produced by the i3 program’s first cohort of grantees. These grantees, originally funded in 2010, began to share their results of the independent evaluations of their projects this past year. The WWC also expanded its capacity to review higher volumes of studies by offering additional reviewer training and awarding a new contract for grant-related study reviews.
Likewise, in FY 2015, ERIC continued to prioritize acquisition of peer-reviewed, full-text education research and secured many new agreements with content providers to enable ERIC to acquire the full text of peer-reviewed research articles supported with FY 2012 or later research funding from IES. This work contributed to surpassing the FY 2015 annual performance target by more than 5,000 full-text, peer-reviewed resources. ERIC also has incorporated a search function that allows users to identify studies in the ERIC database that were reviewed by the WWC and that met standards. In this way, the greater integration of the Department’s WWC and ERIC investments contributes to the “virtuous cycle” of using and producing research evidence.
