For more than twenty years, the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has served as a guiding light for U.S. education research. Its work has pushed the field forward, supporting high-quality, rigorous research in a field known for its reliance on word-of-mouth over science. The studies it funded have answered critical questions about “what works” in key areas like improving reading achievement and increasing associate’s degree attainment. It has served as a centralized, objective repository of data and research to inform educator practice, school district procurement, and state legislation. Even with these achievements, IES has room to grow to ensure that cutting edge research makes it into the hands of those who need it, when they need it.

As part of IES’s ongoing leadership, it has been moving to adopt an approach called “living evidence.” Use of this emerging approach would keep decision-makers up-to-date about the solutions that have been rigorously tested and hold potential to address core challenges facing American schools: How do we respond to astonishingly low scores on NAEP tests? Are there evidence-based approaches we can employ in schools that will help end the national “epidemic” of social isolation? How do we ensure that both our college graduates and those who do not wish to attend college can obtain high-paying jobs?

Harnessing Innovation

This week, FAS and its partners at the Future Evidence Foundation (FEF) released a new report: Harnessing Innovation: Options for Implementing Living Evidence at the Institute of Education Sciences (which you can download using the button on the left-hand side of this page). It describes in great depth how IES could build on existing processes to produce living reviews as part of their What Works Clearinghouse. 

Over time, many have come to believe that the agency moves too slowly to be responsive to practitioner needs, that its approach to sharing research findings does not make clear enough for users whether an intervention is backed by strong evidence, and that it needs to better support innovation. Living evidence is not the silver bullet that can address all of these issues in full. And yet, its proposed adoption could be the foundation for a sea change, allowing IES to more responsively share when new best practices and innovative approaches are identified in the academic literature through the What Works Clearinghouse. However, recent seismic shifts have severely damaged IES’s capability to move forward with using this innovative model: the Trump Administration’s cancellation of nearly all active contracts, including those that made the What Works Clearinghouse’s work possible, and a reduction-in-force (RIF) that led to the firing of nearly all of IES’s staff. 

Report Insights and Key Takeaways

The report was produced as the product of a year-long partnership, where FAS and FEF were granted the opportunity to engage deeply with leadership and staff from IES. Our team learned about their day-to-day processes and potential roadblocks on the path to change. The final ‘options memo’ was carefully constructed to give the IES team a set of realistic approaches they could take to addressing some of their greatest challenges: discerning the topics where knowing ‘what works’ could be most beneficial to the more than 100 million people that the U.S. education system touches, finding the highest-quality academic research from the thousands of studies produced each year on education, and doing this work within a limited set of resources (IES funding made up less than 1% of the Department of Education’s overall spending in 2024). These recommendations were informed by conversations with many of those that knew IES’s work best, from its contractors to the readers of the What Works Clearinghouse’s reports. They offer feasible ways for IES to craft more efficient processes for developing their resources.

From this process, our team had two key takeaways: 

1. While the What Works Clearinghouse faces challenges in achieving its goal to make rigorous research accessible to policymakers and practitioners, the staff and contractors that led its work were steadfast in their dedication to improving its resources. 
2. Living evidence is not just the way of the future in academic circles beyond the U.S., but is a model that is feasible to implement in large federal agencies.

However, canceling contracts and firing experienced, dedicated staff has kneecapped IES’s ability to make the changes necessary to begin creating and deploying living reviews. An opportunity may now be missed to better align IES’s work not just to what their constituents need, but also to how a global community is moving forward in thinking about how to better connect evidence to policy and practice. While the administration has signaled its intent to rebuild IES in the future, it will take time to enact a new vision, and to fix what will inevitably break in the absence of staff to support key resources including the Regional Education Laboratories, the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), and the What Works Clearinghouse. In that time, peer government R&D agencies such as UK Research and Innovation and major philanthropic organizations such as the Wellcome Trust will step up to lead the way on developing infrastructure that supports the use of emerging technology to build living reviews, moving the rest of the world forward while U.S. government agencies remain in the past.

Living Evidence Global Community of Practice

Living evidence still has a path forward in the U.S, and opportunities to continue to grow along with the growing global movement. Innovation outside of government for living evidence holds promise for U.S. education stakeholders, led by work through the HEDCO Institute at the University of Oregon and the clearinghouse Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development. The recommendations in the report will offer value for such organizations as they work to shift toward living systematic reviews, setting the tone for best practice in evidence synthesis while IES is in transition. FAS and FEF will continue to help support this work through our convening of a Living Evidence Community of Practice.

Further, it is our hope that the learnings shared in the report will be considered in re-imagining future iterations of IES. In its short 23 years of existence, IES has raised the rigor of evidence that influences education and made strides in both generating and summarizing evidence that has the potential to inform practice. Even if the administration moves forward in its stated aim of “returning education back to the states”, state and local leaders will still need IES’s resources to understand how best to disburse their budgets. Employing a living approach to evidence synthesis, disseminated at a national level, is a streamlined way to enable evidence-based decision-making nationwide. If the administration genuinely prioritizes government efficiency, the report’s recommendations warrant serious consideration.

FAS is invested in seeing more students gain science and technology skills and enter STEM careers, both for students and for our country’s competitive advantage. In light of this, the FAS Talent Hub would like to highlight one former teacher working at the Department of Education, and the contributions he’s made.

Stephen Kostyo

Stephen Kostyo joined FAS as an Impact Fellow in January of 2023, and started his tour of service with the Department of Education later that year. Kostyo’s focus at the department has been developing and implementing efforts to prioritize a whole student approach through the Full-Service Community Schools (FSCS) and Promise Neighborhoods (PN) programs, ED’s primary place-based programs. Specifically, he has helped manage $241 million in annual appropriations across both programs supporting over 100 grantees.

While at the Department of Education, Kostyo helped create many resources for federal grant recipients like a fact sheet discussing FSCS collaboration opportunities with 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC), a data-driven reporting framework for FSCS grantees, guidance to support students in foster care, an evidence-based chronic absenteeism explainer, and hosted a 5-part “Blending and Braiding” webinar series on the use of federal, state, and local funds to implement whole child approaches to education. 

“Everyone I’ve met at the U.S. Department of Education is passionate, insightful, valuable, and hard-working. This has been the main take-away from my FAS Fellowship. Policies cannot be disconnected from the people who implement them. Leveraging the expertise of former educators, service coordinators, and community leaders empowers local schools to do what they know is best for all kids and families. We need these people in public service. 

I’ve been privileged to work alongside multiple teams at the Department to highlight schools that are making incredible impacts. Too often extraordinary leaders don’t have a megaphone or outlet to share the secrets to their success. So taking the time to lift up their work and its connections to Department-funded programs via webinars, resources, conferences, and site visits has been incredibly rewarding. It has allowed me to show off how community schools in California, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania are reducing chronic absenteeism, or how Promise Neighborhoods in Maryland, Indiana, and Texas are using their schools as hubs to co-locate essential student services like tutoring, nutrition, and health care. Ultimately, my colleagues and I have taken the tools of the Department to show that students across our country—in urban areas, rural areas, red states, and blue states—are thriving in public schools. By letting them and the people who support them share the challenges they have overcome, we’re helping replicate what works.”

A former middle and high school level math and science teacher, Kostyo views his time in service as a continuation of his work to improve public education. He’s written about the benefits of a community school approach and the need for better student data systems for FAS, how states can end corporal punishment in schools by implementing restorative discipline policies, and why extended-year timelines can improve high school graduation rates by reengaging students who experience unexpected challenges.  

Thank you, Stephen! Best wishes as you continue working on these vital efforts.

Twenty-two organizations and 29 individuals from across 12 states sent a letter calling on the U.S. Department of Education to take urgent action to protect students from the dangers of extreme heat on school campuses

WASHINGTON — With meteorologists predicting a potentially record-breaking hot summer ahead, a coalition of 22 organizations from across 12 states is urgently calling on the Department of Education to use its national platform and coordinating capabilities to help schools prepare for and respond to extreme heat. In a coalition letter sent today, spearheaded by the Federation of American Scientists and UndauntedK12, the groups recommend streamlining funding, enhancing research and data, and integrating heat resilience throughout education policies.

“The heat we’re experiencing today will only get worse. Our nation’s classrooms and campuses were not built to withstand this heat, and students are paying the price when we do not invest in adequate protections. Addressing extreme heat is essential to the Department of Education’s mission of equitable access to healthy, safe, sustainable, 21st century learning environments” says Grace Wickerson, Health Equity Policy Manager at the Federation of American Scientists, who recently authored a policy memo on addressing heat in schools.

Many schools across the country – especially in communities of color – have aging infrastructure that is unfit for the heat. This infrastructure gap exposes millions of students to temperatures where it’s impossible to learn and unhealthy even to exist. Despite the rapidly growing threat of extreme heat fueled by climate change, no national guidance, research and data programs, or dedicated funding source exists to support U.S. schools in adapting to the heat.

“Many of our nation’s school campuses were designed for a different era – they are simply not equipped to keep children safe and learning with the increasing number of 90 and 100 degree days we are now experiencing due to climate change. Our coalition letter outlines common sense steps the Department of Education can take right now to move the needle on this issue, which is particularly pressing in schools serving communities of color. All students deserve access to healthy and climate-resilient classrooms,” said Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of UndauntedK12.

The coalition’s recommendations include:

1. Publish guidance on school heat readiness, heat planning best practices, model programs and artifacts, and strategies to build resilience (such as nature-based solutions) in partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NIHHIS, and subject-area expert partners.
   
2. Join the Extreme Heat Interagency Working Group led by the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS).
   
3. Use ED’s platform to encourage states to direct funding resources for schools to implement targeted heat mitigation and increase awareness of existing funds (i.e. from the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) that can be leveraged for heat resilience. Further Ed and the IRS should work together to understand the financing gap between tax credits coverage and true cost for HVAC upgrades in America’s schools.
   
4. Direct research and development funding through the National Center for Educational Statistics and Institute for Education Sciences toward establishing regionally-relevant indoor temperature standards for schools to guide decision making based on rigorous assessments of impacts on children’s health and learning.
   
5. Adapt existing federal mapping tools, like the NCES’ American Community Survey Education Tabulation Maps and NIHHIS’ Extreme Heat Vulnerability Mapping Tool, to provide school district-relevant information on heat and other climate hazards. As an example, NCES just did a School Pulse Panel on school infrastructure and could in future iterations collect data on HVAC coverage and capacity to complete upgrades.
   
6. Evaluate existing priorities and regulatory authority to identify ways that ED can incorporate heat readiness into programs and gaps that would require new statutory authority.

The Federation of American Scientists and UndauntedK12 and our partner organizations welcome the opportunity to meet with the Department of Education to discuss these recommendations and to provide support in developing much needed guidance as we enter another season of unprecedented heat. 

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About UndauntedK12

UndauntedK12 is a nonprofit organization with a mission to support America’s K-12 public schools to make an equitable transition to zero carbon emissions while preparing youth to build a sustainable future in a rapidly changing climate.

About Federation of American Scientists

FAS envisions a world where cutting-edge science, technology, ideas and talent are deployed to solve the biggest challenges of our time. We embed science, technology, innovation, and experience into government and public discourse in order to build a healthy, safe, prosperous and equitable society.