Onboarding Critical Talent in Days: Establishing a Federal STEM Talent Pool
It often takes the federal government months to hire for critical science and technology (STEM) roles, far too slow to respond effectively to the demands of emerging technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence), disasters (COVID), and implementing complex legislation (CHIPS). One solution is for the Federal Government to create a pool of pre-vetted STEM talent to address these needs. This memo outlines how the federal government can leverage existing authorities and hiring mechanisms to achieve this goal, making it easier to respond to staffing needs for emerging policies, technologies, and crises in near-real time.
To lead the effort, the White House should appoint a STEM talent lead (or empower the current Tech Talent Task Force Coordinator or Senior Advisor for Talent Strategy). The STEM talent lead should make a national call to action for scientists and technologists to join the government. They should establish a team in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) to proactively recruit and vet candidates from underrepresented groups, and establish a pool of talent that is available to every agency on-demand.
Challenge and Opportunity
In general, agencies are lagging in adopting best practices for government hiring. This includes the Subject Matter Expert Qualifications Assessment (SMEQA, a hiring process that replaces simple hiring questionnaires with efficient subject-matter-expert-led interviews), shared certificate hiring (which allow qualified but unsuccessful candidates to be hired into similar roles without having to reapply or re-interview), flexible hiring authorities (which allow the government to recruit talent for critical roles (e.g. cybersecurity) more efficiently and allow for alternative work arrangements, such as remote work), proactive sourcing (individual identification and relationship building), and continuous recruiting.
Failure to effectively leverage these hiring tools leads to significant delays in federal hiring, which in turn makes it difficult or impossible for the federal government to nimbly handle rapidly emerging and evolving STEM issue areas (e.g., AI, cybersecurity, extreme weather, quantum computing) and to execute on complex implementation demands.
There is an opportunity to correct this failure by empowering a STEM talent lead in the White House. The talent lead would work with agencies to build a national pool of pre-vetted STEM talent, with the goal of making it possible for federal agencies to fill critical roles in a matter of days – especially when crises strike. This will save the government time, effort, and money while delivering a better candidate experience, which is critical when hiring for in-demand roles.
Plan of Action
The federal government should adopt a four-part plan of action to realize the opportunity described above.
Recommendation 1. Hire and empower a STEM talent lead for critical hiring needs
The next administration should recruit, hire, and empower a STEM talent lead in the Executive Office of the President. The STEM lead should be offered a senior role, either political (Special Assistant to the President) or a senior-level civil service role. The role should sit in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and report to the OSTP director. The STEM talent lead would be tasked with coordinating hiring for critical STEM roles throughout the government. Similar roles currently exist, but are limited to specific subject areas. For instance, the Tech Talent Task Force Coordinator coordinates tech talent policy in an effort to scale hiring and manages a task force that seeks to align agency talent needs. The Senior Advisor for Talent Strategy serves a similar function. The Senior Advisor leads a “tech surge” at the Office of Management and Budget, pulling together workforce and technology policy implementation, including efforts to speed up hiring. Either of these roles could be elevated to the STEM lead, or a new position could be created.
The STEM talent lead would also coordinate government units that have already been established to help deliver STEM talent to federal agencies efficiently. Such units include the United States Digital Service, 18F, Presidential Innovation Fellows, the Lab at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Department of Homeland Security’s Artificial Intelligence Corps, and the Digital Corps at the General Services Administration. The STEM talent lead should be empowered to pull experts from these teams into OSTP for short details to define critical hiring needs. The talent lead should also be responsible for coordinating efforts among the various groups. The goal would not be to supplant the operations of these individual groups, rather to learn from and streamline government-wide efforts in critical fields.
Recommendation 2. Proactive, continuous hiring for key roles across the government
The STEM talent lead should work with the administration and agencies to define the most critical and underrepresented scientific and technical skill sets and identify the highest impact placement for them in the federal government. This is currently being done under the Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence which could be expanded to include all STEM needs. The STEM Lead should establish sourcing strategies and identify prospective hires, possibly building on OPM’s Talent Network goals.
The lead should also collaborate with public and private subject matter experts and use approved and tested hiring processes, such as SMEQA and shared certificates, to pre-vet candidates. These experts would then be placed on a government-wide hiring certificate so that every federal agency could make them a job offer. Once vetted and placed on a government-wide hiring certificate, experts would be available for agencies to onboard within days.
Recommendation 3. Implement a “shared-certificate-by-default” policy
Traditionally, more than one qualified applicant will apply to a federal job opening. In most cases, one applicant will be chosen and the rest rejected, even if the government (even the same agency) has another open role for the same job class. This creates an unnecessary burden on qualified applicants and the government. Qualified applicants should only have to apply once when multiple opportunities exist for the same or similar jobs. This exists, to a limited extent, for excepted service applicants but not for everyone. To achieve this, all critical, scientific, and national security roles should default to shared hiring certificates. Sharing hiring certificates is an approved federal policy but is not the default. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) could issue a policy memo making shared certificates the default, and then work with the OPM to implement it.
Furthermore, the STEM talent lead should coordinate a centralized list of qualified applicants who were not chosen off of shared certificates if they opt-in to receiving job offers from other agencies. This functionality, called “Talent Programs,” has been piloted through USAJobs but has had limited success due to a lack of centralized support.
Recommendation 4. Let departing employees remain available for rapid re-hire into federal roles
Departing staff in critical roles (as determined by the STEM talent lead; see Recommendation 2) with good performance reviews should be offered an opportunity to join a central pool of experts that are available for rehire. The government invests heavily in hiring, training, and providing security clearances to employees with an expectation that they will serve long careers. 20+ year careers, however, are no longer the norm for most applicants. Increasingly, talent is lost to burnout, lack of opportunity inside government, or a desire to do something different. Current policy offers only “reinstatement” benefits, which allow former federal employees to apply for jobs without competing with the broader public. Reinstatement job seekers are still required to apply from scratch to individual positions.
Former employees are a critical group when staffing up quickly. Immediate access to staff with approved security clearances is particularly critical in national emergencies. Former employees also bring their prior training and cultural awareness, making them more effective, quicker than new hires. To incentivize participation from departing employees, the government could offer to maintain their security clearance, give them access to their Thrift Savings Plan and/or medical insurance, and other benefits. This could be piloted through existing authorities (e.g., as intermittent consultants) and OMB and/or OPM could develop a new retention policy based on the outcomes of that pilot.
Conclusion
The federal government needs to establish processes to proactively recruit for key roles, help every qualified candidate get a job, and rapidly respond to STEM staffing needs for critical and complex policies, technologies, and crises. A central pool of science and technology experts can be called upon to fill permanent roles, respond to emergencies, and provide advisory services. Talent can enter and exit the pool as needed, providing the government access to a broad set of skills and experience to pull from immediately.
This action-ready policy memo is part of Day One 2025 — our effort to bring forward bold policy ideas, grounded in science and evidence, that can tackle the country’s biggest challenges and bring us closer to the prosperous, equitable and safe future that we all hope for whoever takes office in 2025 and beyond.
Yes. It can take several months to establish and execute a government-wide hiring action, especially when relying on OPM for approvals. Once a candidate is vetted and placed on a shared certificate, however, the only delay in hiring is an individual agency’s onboarding procedure. Some agencies are already able to hire in days, others will need support refining their processes if they want the fastest response times.
Yes, both processes are approved by OPM and have been implemented many times with positive results. Despite their success, they remain a small portion of overall hiring processes.
The government has diverse talent, just not enough of it. Pooled and government-wide hiring are ways to leverage limited skill sets to increase the number of experts in any given field. In other words, these are approaches that use critical talent from several agencies to vet potential hires that can be distributed to agencies without the expertise to vet the talent themselves. In this way, talent is seeded throughout the government. Those experts can then ramp up hiring in their own agency, accelerating the hiring of critical skills.
While there are costs to developing these capabilities they will likely be offset in the short term by savings in agencies that no longer need to run time-consuming and labor-intensive job searches. The government will benefit from having fewer people with more expertise operating a centralized service. This program also builds on work that has already been piloted, such as SMEQA and Talent Networks which could also be streamlined to provide greater government-wide efficiency.
Given the government-wide nature of the project, it could be funded in subsequent years through OMB’s Cross Agency Priority (CAP) process, which takes place at the end of the fiscal year. CAP recovers unspent funds from federal agencies to fund key projects. The CAP process was used to successfully scale the SMEQA process and the Digital IT Acquisition Program (DITAP), both of which were similar in scope to this proposal.
It is unlikely that this proposal would increase retirements. The problem recently faced by the Secret Service is a program where agents can retire and then take on part-time work after retirement.
The proposal in this memo, by contrast, focuses on pre-retirement-age personnel who are leaving federal service for a variety of reasons. The goal is to make it easier for this pool to rejoin either permanently (pre-vetted for competitive hiring), temporarily (using non-competitive hiring authorities or political avenues), or as advisors (intermittent consultants).
Reinstatement is the process of rejoining the federal government after having served for a minimum of three years. The benefit of reinstatement is that applicants can apply for non-public jobs, where they compete for jobs against internal candidates rather than the public. Reinstatement requires applicants to apply to individual jobs.
By entering the STEM talent pool, this memo envisions that candidates in critical roles with positive performance reviews would not have to apply for jobs. Instead, agencies looking to hire for critical roles would be able to offer a candidate from this pool a job (without the candidate having to apply). If the candidate accepts, the agency would then be able to onboard them immediately.
Critical roles will and should change over time. Part of the duties of the STEM talent lead would be to continually research and define the emerging needs of the STEM workforce and proactively define what roles are critical for the government.
Yes, but it is often hard to find and decipher. FedScope contains federal hiring data that can be mined for insights. For example, 45% of Federal STEM employees who separated from large agencies from 2020-2024 were people who quit, rather than retired from service. The average length of service has dropped since 2019 and is far below retirement age (11.6 years). Internal federal data has also shown a significant drop in IT employees (2210 series jobs) under the age of 35 across CFO Act agencies.
Where should this office be located in the Federal Government?
The most likely place to pilot the STEM talent team would be in the Executive Office of the President, either as a political role (e.g., Special Assistant to the President) in the Office of Science and Technology Policy or limited-term career role (e.g., Senior Leader or Scientific and Professional). The White House’s authority to coordinate and convene experts from across the government makes it an ideal location to operate from at first. Proximity to the President would make it easier to research critical roles throughout government, coordinate the efforts of disparate hiring programs throughout government, and recruit applicants.
Ultimately, however, the team could be piloted anywhere in the government with sufficient centralized authority. After a defined pilot period, the team may benefit from moving into a less political environment. The team should be founded in an environment that is friendly to iteration, risk-taking, and policy coordination.
Better Hires Faster: Leveraging Competencies for Classifications and Assessments
A federal agency takes over 100 days on average to hire a new employee — with significantly longer time frames for some positions — compared to 36 days in the private sector. Factors contributing to extended timelines for federal hiring include (1) difficulties in quickly aligning position descriptions with workforce needs, and (2) opaque and poor processes for screening applicants.
Fortunately, federal hiring managers and HR staffing specialists already have many tools at their disposal to accelerate the hiring process and improve quality outcomes – to achieve better hires faster. Inside and outside their organizations, agencies are already starting to share position descriptions, job opportunity announcements (JOAs), assessment tools, and certificates of eligibles from which they can select candidates. However, these efforts are largely piecemeal and dependent on individual initiative, not a coordinated approach that can overcome the pervasive federal hiring challenges.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council should integrate these tools into a technology platform that makes it easy to access and implement effective hiring practices. Such a platform would alleviate unnecessary burdens on federal hiring staff, transform the speed and quality of federal hiring, and bring trust back into the federal hiring system.
Challenge and Opportunity
This memo focuses on opportunities to improve two stages in the federal hiring process: (1) developing and posting a position description (PD), and (2) conducting a hiring assessment.
Position Descriptions. Though many agencies require managers to review and revise PDs annually, during performance review time, this requirement often goes unheeded. Furthermore, volatile occupations for which job skills change rapidly – think IT or scientific disciplines with frequent changes to how they practice (e.g., meteorology) or new technologies that upend how analytical skills (e.g., data analytics) are practiced – can result in yet more changes to job skills and competencies embedded in PDs.
When a hiring manager has an open position, a current PD for that job is necessary to proceed with the Job Opportunity Announcement (JOA)/posting. When the PD is not current, the hiring manager must work with an HR staffing specialist to determine the necessary revisions. If the revisions are significant, an agency classification specialist is engaged. The specialist conducts interviews with hiring managers and subject-matter experts and/or performs deeper desk audits, job task analyses, or other evaluations to determine the additional or changed job duties. Because classifiers may apply standards in different ways and rate the complexity of a position differently, a hiring manager can rarely predict how long the revision process will take or what the outcome will be. All this delays and complicates the rest of the hiring process.
Hiring Assessments. Despite a 2020 Executive Order and other directives requiring agencies to engage in skills-based hiring, agencies too often still use applicant self-certification on job skills as a primary screening method. This frequently results in certification lists of candidates who do not meet the qualifications to do the job in the eyes of hiring managers. Indeed, a federal hiring manager cannot find a qualified candidate from a certified list approximately 50% of the time when only a self-assessment questionnaire is used for screening. There are alternatives to self-certification, such as writing samples, multiple-choice questions, exercises that test for particular problem-solving or decision-making skills, and simulated job tryouts. Yet hiring managers and even some HR staffing specialists often don’t understand how assessment specialists decide what methods are best for which positions – or even what assessment options exist.
Both of these stages involve a foundation of occupation- and grade-level competencies – that is, the knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviors, and experiences it takes to do the job. When a classifier recommends PD updates, they apply pre-set classification standards comprising job duties for each position or grade. These job duties are built in turn around competencies. Similarly, an assessment specialist considers competencies when deciding how to evaluate a candidate for a job.
Each agency – and sometimes sub-agency unit – has its own authority to determine job competencies. This has caused different competency analyses, PDs, and assessment methods across agencies to proliferate. Though the job of a marine biologist, Grade 9, at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is unlikely to be considerably different from the job of a marine biologist, Grade 9 at the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the respective competencies associated with the two positions are unlikely to be aligned. Competency diffusion across agencies is costly, time-consuming, and duplicative.
Plan of Action
An Intergovernmental Platform for Competencies, PDs, Classifications, and Assessment Tools to Accelerate and Improve Hiring
To address the challenges outlined above, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) should create a web platform that makes it easy for federal agencies to align and exchange competencies, position descriptions, and assessment strategies for common occupations. This platform would help federal hiring managers and staffing specialists quickly compile a unified package that they can use from PD development up to candidate selection when hiring for occupations included on the platform.
To build this platform, the next administration should:
- Invest in creating Position Description libraries starting with the unitary agencies (e.g. the Environmental Protection Agency) then broadening out to the larger, disaggregated ones (e.g., the Department of Health and Human Services). Each agency should assign individuals responsible for keeping PDs in the libraries current at those agencies. Agencies and OPM would look for opportunities to merge common PDs. OPM would then aggregate these libraries into a “master” PD library for use within and across agencies. OPM should also share examples of best-in-class JOAs associated with each PD. This effort could be piloted with the most common occupations by agency.
Adopt competency frameworks and assessment tools already developed by industry associations, professional societies and unions for their professions. These organizations have completed the job task analyses and have developed competency frameworks, definitions, and assessments for the occupations they cover. For example, IEEE has developed competency models and assessment instruments for electrical and computer engineering. Again, this effort could be piloted by starting with the most common occupations by agency, and the occupations for which external organizations have already developed effective competency frameworks and assessment tools. - Create a clearinghouse for assessments at OPM indexed to each occupation associated in the PD Library. Assign responsibility to lead agencies for those occupations responsible for the PDs to keep the assessments current and/or test banks robust to meet the needs of the agencies. Expand USA Hire and funding to provide open access by agencies, hiring managers, HR professionals and program leaders.
- Standardize classification determinations for occupations/grade levels included in the master PD library. This will reduce interagency variation in classification changes by occupation and grade level, increase transparency for hiring managers, and reduce burden on staffing specialists and classifiers.
- Delegate authority to CHCOs to mandate use of shared, common PDs, assessments, competencies, and classification determinations. This means cleaning up the many regulatory mandates that do not already designate the agency-level CHCOs with this delegated authority. The workforce policy and oversight agencies (OPM, OMB, Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)) need to change the regulations, policies, and practices to reduce duplication, delegate decision making, and lower variation (For example, allow the classifiers and assessment professionals to default to external, standardized occupation and grade-level competencies instead of creating/re-creating them in each instance.)
- Share decision frameworks that determine assessment strategy/tool selection. Clear, public, transparent, and shared decision criteria for determining the best fit assessment strategy will help hiring managers and HR staffing specialists participate more effectively in executing assessments.
- Agree to and implement common data elements for interoperability. Many agencies will need to integrate this platform into their own talent acquisition systems such as ServiceNow, Monster, and USA Staffing. To be able to transfer data between them, the agencies will need to accelerate their work on common HR data elements in these areas of position descriptions, competencies, and assessments.
Data analytics from this platform and other HR talent acquisition systems will provide insights on the effectiveness of competency development, classification determinations, effectiveness of common PDs and joint JOAs, assessment quality, and effectiveness of shared certification of eligible lists. This will help HR leaders and program managers improve how agency staff are using common PDs, shared certs, classification consistency, assessment tool effectiveness, and other insights.
Finally, hiring managers, HR specialists, and applicants need to collaborate and share information better to implement any of these ideas well. Too often, siloed responsibilities and opaque specialization set back mutual accountability, effective communications, and trust. These actions entail a significant cultural and behavior change on the part of hiring managers, HR specialists, Industrial/Organizational psychologists, classifiers, and leaders. OPM and the agencies need to support hiring managers and HR specialists in finding assessments, easing the processes that can support adoption of skills-based assessments, agreeing to common PDs, and accelerating an effective hiring process.
Conclusion
The Executive Order on skills-based hiring, recent training from OPM, OMB and the CHCO Council on the federal hiring experience, and potential legislative action (e.g. Chance to Compete Act) are drivers that can improve the hiring process. Though some agencies are using PD libraries, joint postings, and shared referral certificates to improve hiring, these are far from common practice. A common platform for competencies, classifications, PDs, JOAs, and assessment tools, will make it easier for HR specialists, hiring managers and others to adopt these actions – to make hiring better and faster.
Opportunities to move promising hiring practices to habit abound. Position management, predictive workforce planning, workload modeling, hiring flexibilities and authorities, engaging candidates before, during, and after the hiring process are just some of these. Making these practices everyday habits throughout agency regions, states and programs rather than the exception will improve hiring. Looking to the future, greater delegation of human capital authorities to agencies, streamlining the regulations that support merit systems principles, and stronger commitments to customer experience in hiring, will help remove systemic barriers to an effective customer-/and user-oriented federal hiring process.
Taking the above actions on a common platform for competency development, position descriptions, and assessments will make hiring faster and better. With some of these other actions, this can change the relationship of the federal workforce to their jobs and change how the American people feel about opportunities in their government.
This action-ready policy memo is part of Day One 2025 — our effort to bring forward bold policy ideas, grounded in science and evidence, that can tackle the country’s biggest challenges and bring us closer to the prosperous, equitable and safe future that we all hope for whoever takes office in 2025 and beyond.
Not Accessible: Federal Policies Unnecessarily Complicate Funding to Support Differently Abled Researchers. We Can Change That.
Persons with disabilities (PWDs) are considered the largest minority in the nation and in the world. There are existing policies and procedures from agencies, directorates, or funding programs that provide support for Accessibility and Accommodations (A&A) in federally funded research efforts. Unfortunately, these policies and procedures all have different requirements, processes, deadlines, and restrictions. This lack of standardization can make it difficult to acquire the necessary support for PWDs by placing the onus on them or their Principal Investigators (PIs) to navigate complex and unique application processes for the same types of support.
This memo proposes the development of a standardized, streamlined, rolling, post-award support mechanism to provide access and accommodations for PWDs as they conduct research and disseminate their work through conferences and convenings. The best case scenario is one wherein a PI or their institution can simply submit the identifying information for the award that has been made and then make a direct request for the support needed for a given PWD to work on the project. In a multi-year award such a request should be possible at any time within the award period.
This could be implemented by a single, streamlined policy adopted by all agencies with the process handled internally. Or, by a new process across agencies under Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) or Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that handles requests for accessibility and accommodations at federally funded research sites and at federally funded convenings. An alternative to a single streamlined policy across these agencies might be a new section in the uniform guidance for federal funding agencies, also known as 2 CFR 200.
This memo focuses on Federal Open Science funding programs to illustrate the challenges in getting A&A funding requests supported. The authors have taken an informal look at agencies outside of science and technology funding. We found similar challenges across federal grantmaking in the Arts and Humanities, Social Services, and Foreign Relations and Aid entities. Similar issues likely exist in private philanthropy as well.
Challenge and Opportunity
Deaf/hard-of-hearing (DHH), Blind/low-vision (BLV), and other differently abled academicians, senior personnel, students, and post-doctoral fellows engaged in federally funded research face challenges in acquiring accommodations for accessibility. These include, but are not limited to:
- Human-provided ASL-English interpreting and interview transcription services for the DHH and non-DHH participants. While there are some applications of artificial intelligence (AI) that show promise on the transcription side, there’s a long way to go on ASL interpretation in an AI provided model versus the use of human interpreters.
- Visual and Pro-tactile interpreting/descriptive services for the BLV participants
- Adaptive lab equipment and computing peripherals
- Accessibility support or remediation for physical sites
Having these services available is crucial for promoting an inclusive research environment on a larger scale.
Moving to a common, post-award process:
- Allows the PI and the reviewers more time and space to focus on the core research efforts being described in the initial proposal
- Removes any chance of the proposal funding being taken out of consideration due to higher costs in comparison to similar proposals in the pool
- Creates a standard, replicable pathway for seeking accommodations once the overall proposal has been funded. This is especially true if the support comes from a single process across all federal funding programs rather than within each agency.
- Allows for flexibility in accommodations. Needs vary from person-to-person and case-to-case. For example, in the case of workplace accommodations for DHH team members, one full-time researcher may request full-time ASL interpretation on-site, while another might prefer to work primarily through digital text channels; only requiring ASL interpretation for staff meetings and other group activities.
- Potentially reduces federal government financial and human resources currently expended in supporting such requests by eliminating duplication of effort across agencies or, at minimum streamlining processes within agencies.
Such a process might follow these steps below. The example below is from the National Science Foundation (NSF), but the same, or similar process could be done within any agency:
- PI receives notification of grant award from NSF. PI identifies need for A & A services at start, or at any time during the grant period
- PI (or SRS staff) submits request for A&A funding support to NSF. Request includes NSF program name and award number, the specifics of the requested A & A support, a budget justification and three vendor quotes (if needed)
- Use of funds is authorized, and funding is released to PI’s institution and acquisition would follow their standard purchasing or contracting procedures
- PI submits receipts/ paid vendor invoice to funding body
- PI cites and documents use of funds in annual report, or equivalent, to NSF
Current Policies and Practices
Pre-Award Funding
Principal Investigators (PIs) who request A&A support for themselves or for other members of the research team are sometimes required to apply for it in their initial grant proposals. This approach has several flaws.
First and foremost, this funding process reduces the direct application of research dollars for these PIs and their teams compared to other researchers in the same program. Simply put, if two applicants are applying for a $100,000 grant, and one needs to fund $10,000 worth of accommodations, services, and equipment out of the award, they have $10,000 less to pursue the proposed research activities. This essentially creates a “10% A & A tax” on the overall research funding request.
Lived Experience Example
In a real world example, the author and his colleague, the late Dr. Mel Chua, were awarded a $60,000, one year grant to do a qualitative research case study as part of the Ford Foundation Critical Digital Infrastructure Research cohort. As Dr. Chua was Deaf, the PIs pointed out to Ford that $10,000 worth of support services would be needed to cover costs for
- American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters during the qualitative interviews and advisory committee meetings
- Transcription of the interviews
- ASL Interpreting for conference dissemination and collection of comments at formal and informal meetings during those conferences
We communicated the fact that spending general research award money on those services would reduce the research work the funds were awarded to support. The Ford Foundation understood and provided an additional $10,000 as post-award funding to cover those services. Ford did not inform the PIs as to whether that support came from another directed set of funds for A&A support or from discretionary dollars within the foundation.
Second, it can be limiting for the funded project to work with or hire PWDs as co-PIs, students, or if they weren’t already part of the original grant proposal. For example, suppose a research project is initially awarded funding for four years without A&A support and then a promising team member who is a PWD appears on the scene in year three who would require it. In this case, PIs then must:
- Reallocate research dollars meant for other uses within the grant to support A&A;
- Find other funding to support those needs within their institution;
- Navigate the varied post-award support landscape, sometimes going so far as to write an entirely new full proposal with a significant review timeline, to try to get support. If this happens off cycle, the funding might not even arrive until the last few months of the fourth year.
- Or, not hire the person in question because they can’t provide the needed A&A.
Post-Award Funding
Some agencies have programs for post-award supplemental funding that address the challenges described above. While these are well-intentioned, many are complicated and often have different timelines, requirements, etc. In some cases, a single supplemental funding source may be addressing all aspects of diversity, equity and inclusion as well as A&A. The needs and costs in the first three categories are significantly different than in the last. Some post-award pools come from the same agency’s annual allocation program-wide. If those funds have been primarily expended on the initial awards for the solicitation, there may be little, or no money left to support post-award funding for needed accommodations. The table below briefly illustrates the range of variability across a subset of representative supplemental funding programs. There are links in the top row of the table to access the complete program information. Beyond the programs in this table, more extensive lists of NSF and NIH offerings are provided by those agencies. One example is the NSF Dear Colleague Letter Persons with Disabilities – STEM Engagement and Access.
Ideally these policies and procedures, and others like them, would be replaced by a common, post-award process. PIs or their institutions would simply submit the identifying information on the grant that had been awarded and the needs for Accommodations and Accessibility to support team members with disabilities at any time during the grant period.
Plan of Action
The OSTP, possibly in a National Science and Technology Council interworking group process,, should conduct an internal review of the A&A policies and procedures for grant programs from federal scientific research aligned agencies. This could be led by OSTP directly or under their auspices and led by either NSF or the National Institute of Health (NIH). Participants would be relevant personnel from DOE, DOD, NASA, USDA, EPA, NOAA, NIST and HHS, at minimum. The goal should be to create a draft of a single, streamlined policy and process, post-award, for all federal grant programs or a new section in the uniform guidance for federal funding agencies.
There should be an analysis of the percentages, size and amounts of awards currently being made to support A&A in research funding grant programs. It’s not clear how the various funding ranges and caps listed in the table above were determined or if they meet the needs. One goal of this analysis would be to determine how well current needs within and across agencies are being met and what future needs might be.
A second goal would be to look at the level of duplication of effort and scope of manpower savings that might be attained by moving to a single, streamlined policy. This might be a coordinated process between OMB and OSTP or a separate one done by OMB. No matter how it is coordinated, an understanding of these issues should inform whatever new policies or new additions to 2 CFR 200 would emerge.
A third goal of this evaluation could be to consider if the support for A&A post-award funding might best be served by a single entity across all federal grants, consolidating the personnel expertise and policy and process recommendations in one place. It would be a significant change, and could require an act of Congress to achieve, but from the point of view of the authors it might be the most efficient way to serve grantees who are PWDs.
Once the initial reviews as described above, or a similar process is completed, the next step should be a convening of stakeholders outside of the federal government with the purpose of providing input to the streamlined draft policy. These stakeholder entities could include, but should not be limited to, the National Association for the Deaf, The American Foundation for the Blind, The American Association of People with Disabilities and the American Diabetes Association. One of the goals of that convening should be a discussion, and decision, as to whether a period of public comment should be put in place as well, before the new policy is adopted.
Conclusion
The above plan of action should be pursued so that more PWDS will be able to participate, or have their participation improved, in federally funded research. A policy like the one described above lays the groundwork and provides a more level playing field for Open Science to become more accessible and accommodating.It also opens the door for streamlined processes, reduced duplication of effort and greater efficiency within the engine of Federal Science support.
Acknowledgments
The roots of this effort began when the author and Dr. Mel Chua and Stephen Jacobs received funding for their research as part of the first Critical Digital Infrastructure research cohort and were able to negotiate for accessibility support services outside their award. Those who provided input on the position paper this was based on are:
- Dr. Mel Chua, Independent Researcher
- Dr. Liz Hare, Quantitative Geneticist, Dog Genetics LLC
- Dr. Christopher Kurz, Professor and Director of Mathematics and Science Language and Learning Lab, National Technical Institute for the Deaf
- Luticha Andre-Doucette, Catalyst Consulting
This action-ready policy memo is part of Day One 2025 — our effort to bring forward bold policy ideas, grounded in science and evidence, that can tackle the country’s biggest challenges and bring us closer to the prosperous, equitable and safe future that we all hope for whoever takes office in 2025 and beyond.
Based on the percentage of PWDs in the general population size, conference funders should assume that some of their presenters or attendees will need accommodations. Funding from federal agencies should be made available to provide an initial minimum-level of support for necessary A & A. The event organizers should be able to apply for additional support above the minimum level if needed, provided participant requests are made within a stated time before the event. For example, a stipulated deadline of six weeks before the event to request supplemental accommodation, so that the organizers can acquire what’s needed within thirty days of the event.
Yes, in several ways. In general, most of the support needed for these is in service provision vs. hardware/software procurement. However, understanding the breadth and depth of issues surrounding human services support is more complex and outside the experience of most PIs running a conference in their own scientific discipline.
Again, using the example of DHH researchers who are attending a conference. A conference might default to providing a team of two interpreters during the conference sessions, as two per hour is the standard used. Should a group of DHH researchers attend the conference and wish to go to different sessions or meetings during the same convening, the organizers may not have provided enough interpreters to support those opportunities.
By providing interpretation for formal sessions only, DHH attendees are excluded from a key piece of these events, conversations outside of scheduled sessions. This applies to both formally planned and spontaneous ones. They might occur before, during, or after official sessions, during a meal offsite, etc. Ideally interpreters would be provided for these as well.
These issues, and others related to other groups of PWDs, are beyond the experience of most PIs who have received event funding.
There are some federal agency guides produced for addressing interpreting and other concerns, such as the “Guide to Developing a Language Access Plan” Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). These are often written to address meeting needs of full-time employees on site in office settings. These generally cover various cases not needed by a conference convener and may not address what they need for their specific use case. It might be that the average conference chair and their logistics committee is a simply stated set of guidelines to address their short-term needs for their event. Additionally, a directory of where to hire providers with the appropriate skill sets and domain knowledge to meet the needs of PWDs attending their events would be an incredible aid to all concerned.
The policy review process outlined above should include research to determine a base level of A & A support for conferences. They might recommend a preferred federal guide to these resources or identify an existing one.
A Digital Military Talent Initiative for Noncitizen Technologists
Competent and innovative technologists are crucial to the future of U.S. national security. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) warns that a digital talent deficit at the Department of Defense (DOD) represents the greatest impediment to the U.S. military’s effective embrace of emerging technologies (such as artificial intelligence).
A new Digital Military Talent Initiative could help address the military’s digital-talent gap by providing an expedited path to U.S. citizenship through military service for noncitizen technologists aligned to NSCAI archetypes. Modernization of an already-existing DOD program and military enlistment policy updates could infuse digital talent by providing vetted noncitizens a pathway to accelerated naturalization through military service.
Challenge and Opportunity
A paucity of technical talent threatens the U.S. military’s current and future capability goals, as evidenced by the military’s ongoing inability to staff cyber units or achieve objectives set by the Pentagon’s Chief Data Officer. Global competition for technical talent requires the United States to get more creative with recruitment. The former Director of the DOD’s Defense Innovation Unit noted that the Pentagon’s efforts to add science and technology talent to its workforce are “insufficient” given competitors’ gains in these arenas.
If current efforts are insufficient to meet technical talent needs, future efforts may be worse. Projections suggest the U.S. population is aging, such that fewer working-age persons will be available relative to the broader population in years to come. This trend may have an outsize negative impact on the military’s available talent pool, as the military fills its ranks predominantly with younger workers. Only 12% of the nation’s young adults are qualified and available to enlist, further exacerbating the larger recruiting shortage. Compounding the problem is the fact that military-eligible tech talent is often lost to the higher-paying private sector. Last, lack of lifestyle flexibility may make the military a hard sell, especially for innovative and free-thinking talent.
Even the newest models for bringing private-sector talent into the military, such as the U.S. Digital Corps and cyber direct-hire authorities, only harness talent from existing U.S. citizens. Proposals for training more government technologists (e.g., by creating a federal digital service academy) are limited by the number of citizens who may be willing and able to participate.
There is a blueprint that may help overcome these challenges. During the Global War on Terror, the U.S. military enlisted over 10,000 noncitizen volunteers through the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program. Under this program, a select group of pre-screened recruits was offered the chance to remain in the U.S. and obtain citizenship in exchange for military service. Notwithstanding an untimely termination that gave rise to a series of lawsuits, MAVNI was widely recognized as a success. It should be noted that over 14,000 individuals expressed interest in the first year that the U.S. Army sought to enlist recruits in the Global War on Terror pursuant to 10 U.S.C. § 504(b)(2)). However, the program was limited in scope. Although many MAVNI participants held advanced degrees, the skillsets the program sought (due to DOD’s self-imposed restrictions) were limited to certain foreign languages and medical specialties. Modernizing and expanding MAVNI with statutory authority commensurate with the realities of modern conflict could help mitigate technology talent shortages in the military.
Modernizing and expanding MAVNI would also align with the NSCAI’s recommendation for a “comprehensive” legislative strategy to enable “highly skilled immigrants to encourage more AI talent to study, work, and remain in the United States.” Our nation’s inadequate strategies for recruiting foreign technical and STEM talent have caused leading companies like Google to appeal for Congressional assistance, even as peer nations like Canada have developed novel, effective policies to support digital immigration. During the Trump administration, Toronto became the fastest-growing location for tech-sector jobs in North America. The upshot is clear: the U.S. military—and the United States generally—faces a widening tech talent gap that requires out-of-the-box thinking to address.
Plan of Action
We propose a two-part plan of action for launching a national Digital Military Talent Initiative. Part One entails minor modifications to existing law governing U.S. military eligibility. Part Two involves modernizing the existing MAVNI program by expanding the definition of skills deemed “vital to the national interest” and evolving recruitment and technology practices to incorporate this new talent. More detail on each of these components is provided below.
Part 1. Amend existing law governing U.S. military eligibility.
Two paragraphs of 10 U.S.C. § 504(b) should be modified to enable the Department of Defense to access noncitizen technologists. First, 10 U.S.C. § 504(b)(2)—which governs military enlistment of individuals who are neither U.S. citizens, permanent residents, nor citizens of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, or Palau— should be modified to read:
“Notwithstanding paragraph (1), and subject to paragraph (3), the Secretary concerned may authorize enlistment of a person not described in paragraph (1) if the Secretary determines that such person possesses a critical skill or expertise that is vital to the national interest.”
In other words, 10 U.S.C. § 504(b)(2) should be modified by removing provision (B), which currently requires that an enlistee use their referenced “critical skill or expertise” in their “primary daily duties.” This requirement unnecessarily inhibits military commanders at all levels, since critical skills and expertise often include skills and expertise deployed only in moments of the utmost exigency.
Second, 10 U.S.C. § 504(b)(3) should be modified to read:
“A Secretary concerned may not authorize more than 10,000 enlistments under paragraph (2) per military department in a calendar year until after the Secretary of Defense submits to Congress written notice of the intent of that Secretary concerned to authorize more than 10,000 such enlistments in a calendar year.”
This language increases the enlistment number at which the Secretary of Defense is statutorily obligated to notify Congress and does away with the 30-day waiting period that the Secretary must wait between notifying Congress and proceeding with the enlistment authorization.
These modifications are needed to accommodate anticipated recruitment under an expanded MAVNI and help the Secretary to move quickly on leveraging such a talent pool. Congressional changes can be slow and difficult to change; however, without these changes, the MAVNI program will continue to be constrained when bringing noncitizen tech talent into the military.
Part 2. Modernize the DOD’s existing MAVNI program by authorizing enlistment for certain vetted noncitizens with critical digital competencies.
The MAVNI program authorizes certain noncitizens to enlist if they possess critical skills limited to certain foreign languages and medical specialties. As the demands of modern conflict have adjusted at the speed of technological advancement, so too should the way the U.S. staffs its military. The DOD should expand the MAVNI program to include skills aligned to the NSCAI’s digital-talent archetypes, the 2021 Executive Order 14028 on improving the nation’s cybersecurity, FY2022 National Defense Authorization Act, and the 2023 Executive Order 14110 on the development and use of artificial intelligence. The DOD should also consider the following recommendations to modernize the existing MAVNI program.
MAVNI Program Setup:
- Determine talent needs of military service-software factories, as well as tactical-level units and enterprise programs pursuing technology transformations.
- Source and prioritize needs related to specific problem statements and technology applications that can be developed with minimal risk and have potential for significant impact.
- Educate internal stakeholders on leveraging noncitizen technologists capable of developing and shipping code in zero trust environments.
- Evolve and scale MAVNI program infrastructure in alignment with DOD zero trust principles and architecture requirements.
- Develop professional-development and career pathways that incentivize recruited technical talent to remain engaged in their military careers.
- Gather and implement feedback from program alumni and participants on topics including recruitment, retention, training, incentives, and community-building.
Recruitment Process:
- Define enlistment pathways for recruited technical talent. For instance, a recruit might first enter into a non-classified military occupational specialty—whether a unique specialty for uncleared technical talent or a traditional specialty. After receiving a clearance naturalization, the recruit could a) shift to an existing enlisted role in information technology/networking, cyber, and electronic warfare, b) enter a potentially new technology-specialty role, or c) commission as a warrant or officer.
- Understand military recruiter pain points and concerns specific to MAVNI and technical talent identification to ensure appropriate talent screening, talking points, and incentivization for both the recruiter and potential service member.
- MAVNI participants enlisting in the military are encouraged to join any of the Regular or Reserve components.
- Naturalization should occur prior to MAVNI participants reporting to initial active duty training to avoid creating any U.S. visa complications.
Conclusion
The DOD’s current technology talent deficiencies may evolve into an existential vulnerability without significant course correction, while our competitors increase investments in both R&D and STEM education. The DOD can begin addressing these deficiencies through an integrated Technical Military Talent Initiative. Such an initiative should comprise two parts: (1) amending existing law governing enlistment eligibility and (2) modernizing the existing MAVNI program to recruit talent for the military in alignment with STEM skills “vital to the national interest.” Together, these actions will dramatically grow the U.S. military’s eligible technology talent pool, thus enabling it to better compete in future sub-threshold and armed conflict.
This idea was originally published on February 9, 2022; we’ve re-published this updated version on November 13, 2024. The views expressed are those of the authors. The analysis presented stems from the authors’ academic research of publicly available sources, not from protected operational information. All errors and omissions are those of the authors.
This action-ready policy memo is part of Day One 2025 — our effort to bring forward bold policy ideas, grounded in science and evidence, that can tackle the country’s biggest challenges and bring us closer to the prosperous, equitable and safe future that we all hope for whoever takes office in 2025 and beyond.
The Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program recruited noncitizens with needed language and/or medical expertise to serve in the U.S. military. Though widely regarded as successful, MAVNI did encounter friction, such as security concerns. The DOD can address such concerns for an expanded version of MAVNI by ensuring that the totality of contributor service through the program occurs in zero trust security environments, including those already championed by the Army’s Enterprise Cloud Management Agency. This will enable program participants to support critical mission requirements without placing underlying capabilities or operational data at risk. The DOD should also consider piloting a modernized MAVNI in software engineering use cases. Software can be vetted through continuous integration-continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines prior to release. Recruited software engineers can generate features and capabilities for interacting with sensitive data without the engineers actually needing access to that data.
In a global post-digital era, military operations and capabilities are also redefined. The military needs more technology talent to staff cyber units, operate military-software factories, and more. Furthermore, the most recent National Security Strategy’s emphasis on artificial intelligence and “attract[ing] and retain[ing] inventors and innovators” in the digital space highlights the need to think creatively about opportunities to recruit tech talent.
A key reason why relying on contracted talent is a problematic approach is that the success of projects carried out by contractors depends on the education and experience of the military personnel providing project guidance. Recruitment and development of in-house STEM talent is a better, more efficient way for the military to approach technical talent needs for the long term.
Very. Naturalization is the process for an individual to become a U.S. citizen if that individual was born outside of the U.S.. Since 2002, the U.S.has naturalized more than 148,000 members of the U.S. military, both at home and abroad. In the last five years (FY2017–FY2021), the U.S. naturalized almost 30,000 service members. In FY2021, the U.S. naturalized 8,800 service members, a 90% increase over the previous year.
A military service member who has served for one year or more—or who served during a designated period of conflict—can apply for naturalization with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services through the N-400 process. Other requirements for military naturalization include that the service member in question be separated under honorable conditions, be a lawful permanent resident upon application unless serving during wartime, and more. This process, while functional, can also be slow due to DOD’s new policies that prevent recruits from filing their applications early in their period of service. An expedited path towards naturalization for service members with tech talent could help the military meet its technical talent needs.
The NSCAI buckets the archetypes the U.S. needs to train for AI competitiveness into Researchers, Implementers, End Users, and Informed Consumers. The Technical Military Talent Initiative will focus on recruiting researchers and implementers to enhance the U.S.’s capacity to transform national security. Recruitment efforts should emphasize individuals with industry experience, informal training (self-taught, coding boot camps, and other industry-recognized, non-academic accreditation courses), and formal academic STEM education across AI, electrical and computer engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, molecular biology, computational biology, biomedical engineering, cybersecurity, data science, mathematics, physics, human-computer interaction, robotics, and design. The objective is to recruit individuals who can operate in uniform as software engineers, data scientists, data analysts, product designers, hardware engineers, product management, technical program management, solutions architects, and technical information technology and cybersecurity specialists.
There are two categories of visas– immigrant and nonimmigrant. Immigrant visas are issued to foreign nationals who intend to live permanently in the U.S.; an immigrant visa allows the person to obtain “lawful permanent residence,” known as a “green card.” Immigrant visa categories include EB-1A for Extraordinary Ability or EB-1C for Multinational Managers and Executives. Unfortunately, immigrant visas are subject to restrictive quotas both annually and per country, such that it can take many years and thousands of dollars for a person to obtain one. For MAVNI, the focus will be on accessions of nonimmigrant visa holders with STEM degrees or technology skills and experience mapped to NSCAI archetypes seeking to legally remain in the country. These visas include F-1 (and Optional Practical Training “OPT”) for international students, J-1 for STEM exchange students, L-1 for intracompany transferees, O-1A for extraordinary ability, H-1B for specialty occupations, and TN for certain tech workers who hold Canadian or Mexican citizenship. Such individuals have also been extensively vetted by the U.S. Government prior to being accorded their visas, so they are a relatively low risk population compared to persons with other immigration statuses that do not require extensive vetting.
First, the DOD can direct military recruiting centers to prioritize the MAVNI program as one of many pathways to meet broader recruitment goals. Second, the DOD can redefine “critical skills” to include the NSCAI archetypes to identify and recruit individuals with STEM talent. Third, the DOD can implement zero trust principles (or other models) to enable Regular and Reserve components to utilize MAVNI STEM talent with appropriate technology and operational risk management tools and education.
First, Congressional action is needed to remove formal barriers that prevent MAVNI participants from using their STEM skills without limitation from their Military Occupational Specialty “primary daily duties.” Second, Congress needs to increase the number of enlistments available to the DOD for MAVNI participants before triggering Congressional notification, resulting in a 30-day waiting period.
Commonly used in software development pipelines, a zero trust stance “assume[s] that an attacker is present in the environment…an enterprise must continually analyze and evaluate the risks to its assets and business functions and then enact protections to mitigate these risks.” Federal zero trust cybersecurity practices are outlined in NIST Special Publication 800-207. Applying these principles to all operations and units using MAVNI recruits will help mitigate potential security vulnerabilities.
Strengthening the National Labs’ Workforce
The Department of Energy’s National Labs are the beating heart of the U.S.’s leadership in scientific research and innovation. Spread across the country, these institutions provide vital scientific resources to researchers and produce much of the technological progress that make our country’s growth possible. However, to achieve that lofty mission, the Labs need highly skilled people. Not just scientists, but technicians, support staff, and leaders too.
While the Labs have a strong workforce, they also face challenges that make it difficult to recruit and retain the people they need to continue leading the world’s scientific research. This memo outlines challenges, successful strategies, and policy recommendations to ensure that the workforce of the National Labs thrives. It was developed through discussions and interviews with staff and former staff of seven of DOE’s national Labs, as well as representatives from Lab operators, tech transfer recruitment agencies, members of the science academies and basic science advocacy community, and more.
Major Challenges
Lack of awareness of Lab career opportunities
Interviewees reported that there were a few major challenges to recruitment, including the struggle to compete with industry salaries and context-specific location issues like high costs of housing or remote areas. However, many interviewees reported that some of these challenges could be overcome by the unique opportunity that working at a national lab offers: critical, exciting scientific research, flexibility to pursue interests, opportunities to take entrepreneurial leave and come back to the Lab, stable employment, and receiving and providing mentorship.
However, leaders found that talent pools of undergraduates and graduate students were often not aware of the opportunities available at Labs – including employment, research projects, internships and educational programs.
Resources for recruitment and hiring
One of the challenges cited most often was the lack of resources: for quick hiring, for outreach and education programs, for internships and development programs, and for targeted recruitment. Labs noted that funding is not keeping up with need – they lack the staff and financing to conduct large workforce development initiatives at the pace the Labs are growing.
For targeted recruitment, HR professionals in Labs lack funding for emerging technologies (like quantum tech, AI, and fusion). Many also noted that there was a lack of funding for non-scientist positions like technicians – there are not enough resources for training and development for these roles.
Interviewees underscored the importance of K-12 and community outreach programs in educating the community about opportunities at the lab, as well as the importance of internship and development programs like the Office of Science’s Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS) and Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) in building a talent pipeline of early career scientists.
Weaker pensions and potentially benefits depending on contractor
Overlapping concerns around competitive pensions, benefits, and salaries abounded. Many interviewees described the Labs as a happy medium between industry and government – more competitive salaries than government, but better work-life balance and more security than the private sector. However, some of the most appealing benefits like a strong pension have been diluted in the past decade. Changes in how the Labs negotiate contracts with operators led to weakened pensions across the board. Some Labs still offer pensions, but the reduction of those resources removed an incentive for employees to stay long-term and not jump between opportunities.
Lab employees often receive specific training not found anywhere else in the scientific research ecosystem – which means retaining them is important. Earlier-career employees have some desire to experience different positions across industry and government. Entrepreneurial leave programs, combined with long-term security and benefits detailed below could be a winning combination for retention.
Successful Strategies
Of course, DOE’s Labs have proved innovative and tactical to address these challenges. They have developed and used these successful strategies to strengthen their recruitment and retention infrastructure.
Internships/opportunities to build relationships with prospective employees/outreach
Lab teams rely heavily on internships – both graduate and undergraduate – and outreach opportunities to build relationships with prospective employees. Many Labs start recruitment early, and their workforce development doubles as community outreach. Labs have programs that connect their work to their immediate communities, from tabling at state and county fairs to hosting school tours to offering teachers rotational programs within the Labs.
Labs focus on opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to not only learn about careers and life at the Labs, but also gain unique training and build skills that sets them up for jobs later on. Internships, especially those with permanent, guaranteed funding like the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship, were explicitly lauded by Labs for how useful they are in building a talent pipeline. Summer internships, relationships with universities, and offering research funding are all ways Labs keep involved with the community.
Creative and/or non-monetary benefits
Without reliable pensions or the ability to offer salary in line with private sector levels, Labs are getting creative with benefits. Some Labs are located in areas with high costs of living and offer housing stipends for short periods of time. Other Labs offer stipends or benefits for family and elder care, or even relocation allowances for higher-level or hard-to-fill positions. Labs’ relationship with their contracting organization can allow for more creativity when it comes to benefits.
Entrepreneurial Leave programs
One program in particular that offers huge potential for growth is the Entrepreneurial Leave program (ELP). The Labs that use this program speak highly of it – it offers benefits beyond just workforce development.
ELPs can offer a happy medium to employees that enjoy the stability and security of a career with the Labs but crave new professional experiences and challenges. ELP allows them to use their skills and knowledge to try out the private sector for a short time and then return to the Labs. Not only can this support retention, but returning employees bring back knowledge to support technology transfer, commercial partnerships, and further research.
Policy Recommendations
Overall, Labs want more resources for workforce development. Permanent, consistent funding for internship and outreach programs are at the top of that list.
In addition, formalizing and encouraging the use of entrepreneurial leave programs could help Labs stay competitive with the private sector. Congress can take the following steps to continue to support the Labs’ workforce.
Invest resources in workforce development and outreach programs
Congress should increase funding for the Workforce Development for Teachers and Scientists (WDTS) programs – at least to the levels in DOE’s FY25 budget request, if not higher. These include undergraduate and graduate internships as well as educational opportunities for K-12 students and teachers and faculty. Funding has varied over the years – DOE’s FY25 budget request asked for an increase of just over $1 million across the programs. Maintaining and increasing funding for these programs is key for strengthening the talent pipeline of researchers across the country.
Labs rely on these programs to bring in new talent. Many interviewees emphasized that the lack of awareness of Lab jobs combined with the specific training required makes it difficult to onboard candidates using traditional recruitment. Programs like WDTS can help provide a pathway into the Labs for researchers of all backgrounds.
Workforce development programs can also help retain staff – including providing resources for mentorship programs or rotational programs to send researchers to different Labs for a tour of duty. But these need consistent funding through DOE rather than requiring Labs to set aside funding. Minimally, meeting DOE’s program funding requests across WDTS would help support the programs.
Similarly, in order to inform students about lab opportunities early, Congress should provide funding for community engagement and outreach initiatives. These can include partnerships with universities, hiring fairs, and camps for students.
Fund and standardize Entrepreneurial Leave programs across DOE Labs
Entrepreneurial leave programs can be a boon for Labs in retaining staff and offering developmental opportunities as well as spurring technology transfer and Lab partnerships – in turn driving economic growth and the development of intellectual property domestically. Their authorization in the CHIPS and Science Act was a significant win for the Labs. However, programs are inconsistently implemented across the Labs, making it difficult for those with fewer resources or knowledge to get the full benefit.
Congress should appropriate funds to stand up these programs at all Labs – to support DOE in providing guidance, technical assistance, and sharing best practices for EL programs across the Labs. Supporting entrepreneurial skills within the Labs is already embedded within the Office of Technology Transitions’ priorities.
Funding for strategic human capital initiatives
Labs may share certain challenges, but individual Labs face a range of unique challenges as well depending on location and research focus area. Overall funding for human capital could help Labs develop initiatives and direct resources where they need to go. More directed funding towards under-resourced or emerging initiatives (similar to this recently introduced bill) could also be helpful. Labs could stand up outreach programs, hiring fairs, or transition or mentorship programs, depending on need.
Some HR professionals at Labs reported having trouble keeping up with immigration policy changes and fully supporting international postdocs and students, or managing benefits negotiations with contractor operators. Additional funding for HR could help alleviate the pressures.
Develop innovative HR initiatives
Congress can support the development of innovative practices. Some Labs face high housing prices in their communities, making it difficult to attract competitive and diverse applicants. Congress could provide funding for housing stipends and potentially offer these stipends under national security authorities at certain Labs. Similarly, Congress could fund relocation assistance programs.
Congress could also authorize the use of the Direct Hire Authority for Labs to help them hire more quickly for targeted roles. Building off of the success of the Clean Energy Corps, the Labs could use the authority to take full advantage of outreach programs, especially at universities, and market the opportunity as a prestigious, exciting way to work at the forefront of scientific progress.
Overall, providing more resources to the Labs in the form of funding for retention and recruitment is what’s needed to continue to maintain a competitive, high-quality scientific workforce.
Moving the Needle on STEM Workforce Development through Fellowships and Mentorship Support in the CHIPS and Science Act
The CHIPS and Science Act ushered in unprecedented opportunities for American manufacturing, science, and innovation – and yet, current underfunding leaves the outcomes at risk.
The legislation directs the federal government to invest $280 billion to bolster U.S. semiconductor capacity, catalyze R&D, create regional high-tech hubs, and develop a larger, more inclusive STEM workforce. The federal investment of $50 billion in semiconductor manufacturing is estimated to add $24.6 billion annually to the American economy and create 185,000 jobs from 2021 to 2026. However, at the current rate of STEM degree completion, the U.S. may not be able to produce enough qualified workers to fill these jobs. Left unaddressed, this labor market gap will have cascading effects on the U.S. economy and compromise the nation’s global competitiveness.
Supporting STEM Workforce Development by Expanding Fellowship and Mentorship Programs
Despite the progress that has been made in recent years to grow the STEM pipeline, STEM graduates continue to lack the opportunity to contribute to the research enterprise and are not equipped to translate their scientific knowledge into actionable policy solutions. The CHIPS and Science Act attempts to address the shortfall in the U.S. STEM workforce and create more career pathways for graduates by authorizing federal agencies to expand their fellowship programs.
For example, the legislation directs the National Science Foundation (NSF) to expand the number of new graduate research fellows supported annually over the next 5 years to no fewer than 3,000 fellows. This provision echoes the recommendations from a 2021 Federation of American Scientists (FAS) policy memo calling for the expansion of the Graduate Research Fellowship Program in order to catalyze and train a new workforce that would maintain America’s leading edge in the industries of the future. Another important provision has led to the launch of NSF’s Entrepreneurial Fellowships in September 2022, with the goal of supporting STEM entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds in turning breakthroughs from the laboratory into products and services that benefit society.
In addition to fellowships, the legislation also includes federal funding for graduate student and postdoctoral research mentorship and professional development, which are critical elements to developing our nation’s research enterprise. Supportive mentors and advisors can guide career planning for future scientists and help them develop the necessary critical thinking and problem solving skills. This is also the case for students from underrepresented minority backgrounds (URMs), where positive research and mentorship experiences contribute to persistence in intention to pursue a STEM career following graduation.
While these provisions are promising, more can be done to ensure better oversight and support of mentorship programs within federal funded research programs. The GRAD Coalition, which was established to support the Congressional Graduate Research and Development Caucus, has called on Congress to expand mentorship oversight and support, specifically to:
- Provide systematic oversight of graduate student mentorship. For example, survey mentorship experiences at the national level or mandate institutional data collection and reporting on graduate student advising;
- Develop incentive structures that support effective mentorship practices. For example, mentorship training programs that grant meaningful certification;
- Expand the mentorship plan mandate for funding proposals to include all federal agencies that fund graduate student research. The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 provisions concerning graduate student advising only apply to grants administered under the National Science Foundation (NSF). However, graduate students and their advisors rely on funding from many federal agencies outside the NIH and NSF, which do not currently mandate mentorship plans.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has long recognized the need for mentorship at the post-doctoral level. In 2023,the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) Working Group on Re-envisioning NIH-Supported Postdoctoral Training held listening sessions resulting in a report detailing many aspects of the postdoctoral experience in biomedical fields: lack of adequate compensation, concerns about postdoctoral quality of life and challenges with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Many of these postdoctoral issues have been known for some time but continue to be insufficiently addressed. The report calls for increasing oversight and accountability of faculty for mentoring, specifically for NIH to:
- Provide more detailed mentorship requirements in requests for applications, expand the Individual Development Plan (IDP), and require that the IDP be regularly updated as part of the project progress report;
- Weigh principal investigator (PI) performance in postdoc mentoring and career development equally with research progress as criteria for continued funding, and require/encourage mentoring contracts and support acquiring and transferring mentoring tools from PI to postdoc;
- Increase transparency of PIs’ postdoc mentorship track records. Institutions should be required to record and report clearly on department websites the names of each postdoc and their next position;
- Require mentoring committees to ensure that postdocs receive all types of mentoring needed.
While boosts for science and education provisions in the legislation have been authorized, funding for the “and science” portion of the act has fallen short in several areas. FAS analysis shows that the FY 2024 appropriations for NSF are approximately $6 billion-short or 39% below the CHIPS and Science authorization levels, which has the potential to set the U.S. back in several areas of science and technology.
Maintaining the U.S. scientific and research enterprise requires a whole-of-government approach. Expanding fellowship programs and better incorporating mentorship in federal-funded programs can have far-reaching consequences for the STEM pipeline and maintaining our nation’s edge in scientific research and innovation. The CHIPS and Science Act provides specific opportunities for federal agencies, Congress, and the executive branch to grow the U.S. STEM workforce pipeline by expanding fellowships and mentorship support for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Our nation’s global leadership in science and technology is dependent upon the research and innovation driven by graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, and fully funding the authorized programs and new initiatives in the CHIPS and Science Act will help ensure that this trend continues.
Expanding Pathways for Career Research Scientists in Academia
Summary
The U.S. university research enterprise is plagued by an odd bug: it encourages experts in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) to leave it at the very moment they become recognized as experts. People who pursue advanced degrees in STEM are often compelled by deep interest in research. But upon graduation from master’s, Ph.D., or postdoctoral programs, these research-oriented individuals face a difficult choice: largely cede hands-on involvement in research to pursue faculty positions (which increasingly demand that a majority of time be spent on managerial responsibilities, such as applying for grants), give up the higher pay and prestige of the tenure track in order to continue “doing the science” via lower-status staff positions (e.g., lab manager, research software engineer), or leave the academic sector altogether.
Many choose the latter. And when that happens at scale, it harms the broader U.S. scientific enterprise by (i) decreasing federal returns on investment in training STEM researchers, and (ii) slowing scientific progress by creating a dearth of experienced personnel conducting basic research in university labs and mentoring the next generation of researchers. The solution is to strengthen and elevate the role of the career research scientist1 in academia—the highly trained senior research-group member who is hands-on and in the lab every day—in the university ecosystem. This is, fundamentally, a fairly straightforward workforce-pipeline issue that federal STEM-funding agencies have the power to address. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) — two of the largest sources of academic research funding — could begin by hosting high-level discussions around the problem: specifically, through an NSF-led workshop and an NIH-led task force. In parallel, the two agencies can launch immediately tractable efforts to begin making headway in addressing the problem. NSF, for instance, could increase visibility and funding for research software engineers, while NSF and/or NIH could consider providing grants to support “co-founded” research labs jointly led by an established professor or principal investigator (PI) working alongside an experienced career research scientist.
The collective goal of these activities is to infuse technical expertise into the day-to-day ideation and execution of science (especially basic research), thereby accelerating scientific progress and helping the United States retain world scientific leadership.
Challenge and Opportunity
The scientific status quo in the United States is increasingly diverting STEM experts away from direct research opportunities at universities. STEM graduate students interested in hands-on research have few attractive career opportunities in academia: those working as staff scientists, lab managers, research software engineers, and similar forego the higher pay and status of the tenure track, while those working as faculty members find themselves encumbered by tasks that are largely unrelated to research.
Making it difficult for STEM experts to pursue hands-on research in university settings harms the broader U.S. scientific enterprise in two ways. First, the federal government disburses huge amounts of money every year—via fellowship funding, research grants, tuition support, and other avenues—to help train early-career STEM researchers. This expenditure is warranted because, as the Association of American Universities explains, “There is broad consensus that university research is a long-term national investment in the future.” This investment hinges on university contributions to basic research; universities and colleges account for just 13% of overall U.S. research and development (R&D) activity, but nearly half (48%) of basic research. Limited career opportunities for talented STEM researchers to continue “doing the science” in academic settings therefore limits our national returns on investment in these researchers.
| Box 1. Productivity benefits of senior researchers in software-driven fields. |
| Cutting-edge research in nearly all STEM fields increasingly depends on software. Indeed, NSF observes that software is “directly responsible for increased scientific productivity and significant enhancement of researchers’ capabilities.” Problematically, there is minimal support within academia for development and ongoing maintenance of software. It is all too common for a promising research project at a university lab to wither when the graduate student who wrote the code upon which the project depends finishes their degree and leaves. The field of deep learning (a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning) underscores the value of research software. Progress in deep learning was slow and stuttering until development of user-friendly software tools in the mid-2010s: a development spurred mostly by private-sector investment. The result has been an explosion of productivity in deep learning. Even now, top AI research teams cite software-engineering talent as a critical input upon which their scientific output depends. But while research software engineers are some of the most in-demand and valuable team members in the private sector, career positions for research software engineers are uncommon at academic institutions. How much potential scientific discovery are U.S. university labs failing to recognize as a result of this underinvestment? |
Second, attrition of STEM talent from academia slows the pace of U.S. scientific progress because most hands-on research activities are conducted by graduate students rather than more experienced personnel. Yet, senior researchers are far more scientifically productive. With years of experience under their belt, senior researchers possess tacit knowledge of how to effectively get research done in a field, can help a team avoid repeating mistakes, and can provide the technical mentorship needed for graduate students to acquire research skills quickly and well. And with graduate students and postdocs typically remaining with a research group for only a few years, career research scientists also provide important continuity across projects. The productivity boosts that senior researchers can deliver are especially well established for software-driven fields (see box).
The absence of attractive job opportunities for career research scientists at most academic institutions is an anomaly. Such opportunities are prevalent in the private sector, at national labs (e.g., those run by the NIH and the Department of Energy) and other government institutions, and in select well-endowed university labs that enjoy more discretionary spending ability. As the dominant funder of university research in the United States, the federal government has massive leverage over the structure of research labs. With some small changes in grant-funding incentives, federal agencies can address this anomaly and bring more senior research scientists into the academic research system.
Plan of Action
Federal STEM-funding agencies — led by NSF and NIH, as the two largest sources of federal funding for academic research — should explore and pursue strategies for changing grant-funding incentives in ways that strengthen and elevate the role of the career research scientist in academia. We split our recommendations into two parts.
The first part focuses on encouraging discussion. The problem of limited career options for trained STEM professionals who want to engage in hands-on research in the academic sector currently flies beneath the radar of many extremely knowledgeable stakeholders inside and outside of the federal government. Bringing these stakeholders together might result in excellent actionable suggestions on how to retain talented research scientists in academia. Second, we suggest two specific projects to make headway on the problem: (i) further support for research software engineers and (ii) a pilot program supporting co-founded research labs. While the recommendations below are targeted to NSF and NIH, other federal STEM-funding agencies (e.g., the Departments of Energy and Defense) can and should consider similar actions.
Part 1. Identify needs, opportunities, and options for federal actions to support and incentivize career research scientists.2
Shifting academic employment towards a model more welcoming to career research scientists will require a mix of specific new programs and small and large changes to existing funding structures. However, it is not yet clear which reforms should be prioritized. Our first set of suggestions is designed to start the necessary discussion.
Specifically, NSF should start by convening key community members at a workshop (modeled on previous NSF-sponsored workshops, such as the workshop on a National Network of Research Institutes [NNRI]) focused on how the agency can encourage creation of additional career research scientist positions at universities. The workshop should also (i) discuss strategies for publicizing and encouraging outstanding STEM talent to pursue such positions, (ii) identify barriers that discourage universities from posting for career research scientists, and (iii) brainstorm solutions to these barriers. Workshop participants should include representatives from federal agencies that sponsor national labs as well as industry sectors (software, biotech, etc.) that conduct extensive R&D, as these entities are more experienced employers of career research scientists. The workshop should address the following questions:
- How can NSF minimize the effects of the “research scientist tax”?3
- What are the specific problems that a research scientist-centered workforce could address?
- What tools does NSF have to affect academic-employment structures? Are there ways to incentivize the employment of research scientists within a project-based funding framework?
- Are there ways to relax grant-funding constraints such that PIs could hire contract research scientists when appropriate?
- In what areas of research and education does the faculty-as-manager paradigm dominate and in what areas are senior research scientists critical but currently unavailable? To what extent do these areas (problematically) overlap?
- How could career research scientists support NSF’s core mission of “advancing research and education” (including by training graduate students)?
- In an industry-employment landscape that provides highly paid opportunities for career research scientists, how can NSF support universities in talent retention?
- What best practices for hiring and retaining career research scientists can be gleaned from existing employment models in national labs and industry?
- Are there tools that would increase the prestige and attractiveness of non-faculty but research-oriented positions within academia?
The primary audience for the workshop will be NSF leadership and policymakers. The output of the workshop should be a report suggesting a clear, actionable path forward for those stakeholders to pursue.
NIH should pursue an analogous fact-finding effort, possibly structured as a working group of the Advisory Committee to the Directorate. This working group would identify strategies for incentivizing labs to hire professional staff members, including expert lab technicians, professional biostatisticians, and RSEs. This working group will ultimately recommend to the NIH Director actions that the agency can take to expand the roles of career research scientists in the academic sector. The working group would address questions similar to those explored in the NSF workshop.
Part 2. Launch two pilot projects to begin expanding opportunities for career research scientists.
Pilot 1. Create a new NSF initiative to solicit and fund requests for research software engineer (RSE) support.
Research software engineers (RSEs) build and maintain research software, and train scientists to use that software. Incentivizing the creation of long-term RSE positions at universities will increase scientific productivity and build the infrastructure for sustained scientific progress in the academic sector. Though a wide range of STEM disciplines could benefit from RSE involvement, NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate is a good place to start expanding support for RSEs in academic projects.
CISE has previously invested in nascent support structures for professional staff in software and computing fields. The CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) was created to build research independence among early-career researchers working in CISE-related fields by funding graduate-student appointments. Much CRII-funded work involves producing — and in turn, depends on — shared community software. Similarly, the Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) and RCD Nexus are NSF-supported programs focused on creating guidelines and resources for campus research computing operations and infrastructure. Through these two programs, NSF is helping universities build a foundation of (i) software production and (ii) computing hardware and infrastructure needed to support that software.
However, effective RSEs are crucial for progress in scientific fields outside of CISE’s domain. For example, one of this memo’s authors has personal experience with NSF-funded geosciences research. PIs working in this field are desperate for funding to hire RSEs, but do not have access to funding for that purpose. Instead, they depend almost entirely on graduate students.
As a component of the workshop recommended above, NSF should highlight other research areas hamstrung by an acute need for RSEs. In addition, CISE should create a follow-on CISE Software Infrastructure Initiative (CSII) that solicits and funds requests from pre-tenure academic researchers in a variety of fields for RSE support. Requests should explain how the requested RSE would (i) catalyze cutting-edge research, and (ii) maintain critical community open-source scientific software. Moreover, academia severely lacks strong mentorship in software engineering. A specific goal of CSII funding should be to support at least a 1:3 ratio of RSEs to graduate students in funded labs. Creative evaluation mechanisms will be needed to assess the success of CSII. The goal of this initiative will be a community of university researchers productively using software created and supported by RSEs hired through CSII funding.
Pilot 2. Provide grants to support “co-founded” research labs jointly led by an established professor or principal investigator (PI) working alongside an experienced career research scientist.
Academic PIs (typically faculty) normally lead their labs and research groups alone. This state of affairs leads to high rates of burnout, possibly leading to poor research success. In some cases, starting an ambitious new project or company with a co-founder makes the endeavor more likely to succeed while being less stressful and isolating. A co-founder can provide a complementary set of skills. For example, the startup incubator Y Combinator is well known for wanting teams to include a CEO visionary and manager working alongside a CTO builder and designer. By contrast, academic PIs are expected to be talented at all aspects of running a modern scientific lab. Developing mechanisms to help scientists come together and benefit from complementary skill sets should be a high priority for science-funding agencies.
We recommend that NSF and/or NIH create a pilot grant program to fund co-founded research labs at universities. Formally co-founded research groups have been successful across scientific domains (e.g., the AbuGoot Lab at MIT and the Carpenter-Singh Lab at the Broad Institute), but remain quite rare. Federal grants for co-founded research labs would build on this proof of concept by competitively awarding 5–7 years of salary and equipment funding to support a lab jointly run by an early-career PI and a career research scientist. A key anticipated benefit of this grant program is increased retention of outstanding researchers in positions that enable them to keep “doing the science.” Currently, the most talented STEM researchers become faculty members or leave academia altogether. Career research scientist positions simply cannot offer competitive levels of compensation and prestige. Creating a new, high-profile, grant-funded opportunity for STEM talent to remain in hands-on university lab positions could help shift the status quo. Creating a pathway for co-founded and co-led research labs would also help PIs avoid isolation and burnout while building more robust, healthy, and successful research teams.
Conclusion
Many breakthroughs in scientific progress have required massive funding and national coordination. This is not one of them. All that needs to be done is allow expert research scientists to do the hands-on work that they’ve been trained to do. The scientific status quo prevents our nation’s basic research enterprise from achieving its full potential, and from harnessing that potential for the common good. Strengthening and elevating the role of career research scientists in the academic sector will empower existing STEM talent to drive scientific progress forward.
Yes. The tech sector is a good example. Multiple tech companies have developed senior individual contributor (IC) career paths. These IC career paths allow people to grow their influence while remaining mostly in a hands-on technical role. The most common role of a senior software engineering IC is that of the “tech lead”, guiding the technical decision making and execution of a team. Other paths might involve prototyping and architecting a critical new system or diving in and solving an emergency problem. For more details on this kind of career, look at the Staff Engineer book and accompanying discussion.
The United States has long been the international leader in scientific progress, but that position is being threatened as more countries develop the human capital and infrastructure to compete in a knowledge-oriented economy. In an era where humankind faces mounting existential risks requiring scientific innovation, maintaining U.S. scientific leadership is more important than ever. This requires retaining high-level scientific talent in hands-on, basic research activities. But that goal is undermined by the current structure of employment in American academic science.
Key federal STEM-funding agencies that could also consider ways to support and elevate career research scientist positions include the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, and Energy, as well as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Addressing the Mental Health Crisis Among Predoctoral and Postdoctoral Researchers in STEM
Summary
The growing mental–health crisis among science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) doctoral and postdoctoral researchers threatens the future and competitiveness of science and technology in the United States. The federal government should tackle this crisis through a four-part approach to (i) improve data collection on the underlying drivers of mental-health struggles in STEM, (ii) discourage behaviors and cultures that perpetuate stress, (iii) require Principal Investigators (PIs) to submit a statement of their mentoring philosophy as part of applications for federally supported research grants, and (iv) increase access to mental-health care for predoctoral and postdoctoral researchers.
Challenge and Opportunity
The prevalence of mental-health problems is higher among Ph.D. students than in the highly educated general population: fully half of Ph.D. students experience psychological distress. In a survey of postdoctoral researchers conducted by Nature, 51% of respondents reported considering leaving science due to work-related mental-health concerns. 65% of respondents reported experiencing power imbalances or bullying during their postdoctoral appointments, and 74% reported observing the same. Stress accumulation not only leads to the development of neuropsychiatric disorders among the developing STEM workforce — it also contributes to burnout. At a time when advancing U.S. competitiveness in science and technology is of utmost importance, the mental-health crisis is depleting our nation’s STEM pipeline when we should be expanding and diversifying it. This is a crisis that the federal government is well-positioned to and must solve.
Plan of Action
The federal government should counter the mental-health crisis for U.S. doctoral and postdoctoral researchers through a four-part approach to (i) improve data collection on the underlying drivers of mental-health struggles in STEM, (ii) discourage behaviors that perpetuate stress, (iii) require PIs to submit a statement of their mentoring philosophy as part of applications for federally supported research grants, and (iv) increase access to mental-health care for doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. Detailed recommendations associated with each of these steps are provided below.
Part 1. Improve data collection
Data drives public policy. Various organizations conduct surveys evaluating the mental health of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in STEM, but survey designs, target audiences, and subsequent follow-up and monitoring are inconsistent. This fragmented information ecosystem makes it difficult to integrate and act on existing data on mental health in STEM. To provide a more comprehensive picture of the STEM mental-health landscape in the United States, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) should work together to conduct and publish biennial evaluations of the state of mental health of the STEM workforce. The survey format could be modeled on the NSF’s Survey of Doctorate Recipients or the Survey of Earned Doctorates — and, like those surveys, resultant data could be maintained at NSF under the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. Once established, the data from the survey can be used to track effectiveness of programs that are implemented and direct the federal government to change or start new initiatives to modify the needs of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers. Additionally, the NSF and NIH could partner with physicians within HHS to define and establish what “healthy” means in terms of mental-health guidelines in order to establish new program guidelines and goals.
Part 2. Discourage problematic behaviors
The future of a doctoral or postdoctoral researcher depends considerably on the researcher’s professional relationship with their PI(s). Problems in the relationship — including bullying, harassment, and discrimination — can put a trainee in a difficult situation, as the trainee may worry that confronting the PI could compromise their career opportunities. The federal government can take three steps to discourage these problematic behaviors by requiring PIs to submit and implement training and mentorship plans for all grant-supported trainees.
First, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) should assemble a committee of professionals in psychology, social sciences, and human resources to define what behaviors constitute bullying and harassment in academic work environments. The committee’s findings should be publicized via a web portal (similar to NSF’s website on Sexual Harassment), and included in all requests for grant applications issued by federal STEM-funding agencies (in order to raise awareness among PIs).
Second, federal STEM-funding agencies should require universities to submit annual reports of bullying to federal, grant-issuing agencies. NSF already requires institutions to report findings of sexual harassment and other forms of harassment and can revoke grants if a grantee is found culpable. NSF and other STEM-funding agencies should add clarity to this definition and broaden this reporting to include bullying and retaliation to include bullying and retaliation attempts by PIs, with similar consequences for repeated offenses. Reinstatement of privileges (e.g., reinstatement of eligibility for federal grant funding) would be considered on a case-by-case basis by the grant-issuing institution and could be made contingent on implementation of an adequate “re-entry” plan by the PI’s home institution. The NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research should be consulted to help formulate such “re-entry” plans to benefit both researchers and PIs.
Third, STEM-funding agencies could work together to establish a mechanism whereby trainees can anonymously report problematic PI behaviors. NSF has a complaint form for those who wish to report incidents for incidents of sexual harassment or harassment. Thus, NSF could expand their system to accept broader incidents such as bullying and retaliation attempts and NIH could use this complaint form as a template for reporting as well. In conjunction with reporting misconduct, a “two-strike” accountability system should be imposed if a PI is found guilty of harassment, bullying, or other behaviors that could contribute to the development of a neuropsychiatric disorder. After receiving a first strike (report of problematic behavior and a guilty verdict), the PI would be given a warning and be required to participate in relevant training workshops and counseling using a plan outlined by social science professionals at NIH. If a second strike is received, the PI would lose privileges to apply for federal grant funding and opportunities to serve on committees that are often favored for tenure and promotion, such as grant review committees. Again, reinstatement of privileges would be considered on a case-by-case basis by the grant-issuing institution and could be made contingent on implementation of an adequate “re-entry” plan.
Part 3. Require submission of mentoring philosophies
NIH F31 predoctoral and F32 postdoctoral award applications already require PIs to submit mentoring plans for their trainees to receive professional-development training. Federal STEM-funding agencies should build on this precedent by requiring PIs applying for federal grants to submit not just mentoring plans, but brief summaries of their mentoring philosophies. As the University of Colorado Boulder explains, a mentoring philosophy
“…defines [a mentor’s] approach to engaging with students as [they] guide their personal growth and professional development, often explaining [the mentor’s] motivation to mentor with personal narratives while highlighting their goals for successful relationships and broader social impact. These statements may also be considered ‘living documents’ that are updated as [the mentor] refine[s[ [their] approach and the context and goals of [their] work changes.”
Mentoring philosophies help guide development of and updates to individualized mentoring plans. Mentoring philosophies also promote equity and inclusion among mentees by providing a common starting point for communication and expectations. Requiring PIs to create mentoring philosophies will elevate mental health among doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in STEM by promoting effective top-down mentorship and discouraging unintended marginalization. And since a growing number of university faculty are already creating mentoring philosophies, this new requirement shouldn’t be seen as just another administrative burden; rather, it would serve as a means to quickly perpetuate a best practice that is already spreading. The federal government can support PIs in adhering to this new requirement by working with external partners to collect and broadly share resources related to preparing mentoring philosophies. The Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research, for instance, has already assembled a suite of such resources on its web platform.
Part 4. Increase access to mental health care
Concurrent with reducing causes of mental health burdens, the federal government should work to expand doctoral and postdoctoral researchers’ access to adequate mental-health care. Current access may vary considerably depending on the level of insurance coverage offered by a researcher’s home institution. Inspired by legislation (S. 3048 – Stopping the Mental Health Pandemic Act, where funds can be used to support and enhance mental health services) introduced in the 117th Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should partner with federal STEM-funding agencies to design and implement new pathways, programs, and opportunities to strengthen mental-health care among early-career STEM professionals. In particular, the federal government could create a library of model policies that federally funded public and private institutions could adopt to strengthen mental-health care for employed early-career researchers. Examples include allowing trainees to take time off during the workday to receive mental-health treatment without expectations to make up hours outside of business hours, providing a supplemental stipend for trainees to pay for therapy costs that are not covered by insurance, and addressing other sources of stress that can exacerbate stressful situations, such as increasing stipends to decrease financial stress.
Conclusion
The U.S. science and technology enterprise is only as strong as the workforce behind it. Failing to address the mental-health crisis that plagues early-career researchers will lead the United States to fall behind in global research and development due to talent attrition. President Biden’s 2022 State of the Union address cited mental health as a priority area of concern. There is an especially clear need for a culture change around mental health in academia. The four actions detailed in this memo align with the President’s policy agenda. By improving data collection on the mental-health status of STEM doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, discouraging behaviors and cultures that produce stress among this population, improving training and mentorship at universities, and expanding access to mental-health care among STEM doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, the federal government can ensure that success for early-career STEM professionals does not demand mental-health sacrifice.
STEM fields are closely tied to the U.S. economy, supporting two-thirds of U.S. jobs and 69% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Attrition of U.S. researchers from STEM fields due to mental-health challenges has disproportionately adverse effects on American society and undermines U.S. competitiveness. Policymakers should prioritize actions designed to combat the mental-health crisis in STEM.
NSF already requires that universities who receive federal research funding conduct internal investigations to validate claims of harassment and sexual harassment. Similar policies could be implemented regarding reported bullying and/or workplace harassment. If an allegation is found to be false, it should be handled by university-specific policies.
The goal of requiring PIs to attend workshops on mentorship and therapy sessions is to help them better themselves and improve their ability to mentor the next generation of STEM professionals. Re-entry to mentoring trainees will be closely monitored by leadership faculty who should conduct surveys of both mentors and mentees to determine if the PI understands (a) their previous misconduct and (b) the lasting mental health effects that their previous actions inflicted on their trainees.
NIH and NSF are arguably the two leading federal agencies when it comes to providing federal funding for graduate students. That said, recommendations presented in this memo could easily be extended to other STEM-funding agencies. For instance, there is a timely opportunity to extend these recommendations to the Department of Energy (DOE). DOE is currently working to manage the President’s major FY23 investment in clean energy and sustainability, including through significant research-grant funding. Coupling these new grants with policies designed to mitigate mental-health burdens among early-career researchers could help foster a more resilient and productive clean-energy workforce and serve as a pilot group for the NIH and NSF to follow.
The administrative responsibilities for reporting are minimal. NSF’s Organizational Notification of Harassment Form can — at a minimum — be used as a template for NSF, NIH, and other agencies to notify the federal government of guilty verdicts from universities. Alternatively, doctoral and postdoctoral researchers can submit incidents for reporting by federal agencies similar to NSF’s existing complaint form, which would reduce the initial administrative burden of university employees but may create additional hours of work once federal agencies conduct their investigations.
While the strategies above teach researchers how to cope with stress, a long-term, more supportive approach would be to reduce stress by going straight to the source. Actions such as addressing harassment and bullying will benefit not only the researcher themselves, but others in the work environment by fostering a responsible, low-stress culture.
7. How are mentoring philosophies different from mentoring plans?
The submission of mentoring plans by PIs are currently required for NIH pre- and post-doctoral fellowship applications. They are meant to supplement the training of a researcher by focusing on the logistics of skill building. However, mentorship of a researcher transcends knowledge and skill-building — it also encompasses the holistic development of a researcher, supporting and respecting their interests, values, and considerations of their individual situations. Thus, submission of a mentoring philosophy is meant to stimulate thoughts and conversations about how a PI wants to communicate openly and honestly with their trainee and how they can adapt to support the mentoring style that best fits their trainee.
Broadening the Knowledge Economy through Independent Scholarship
Summary
Scientists and scholars in the United States are faced with a relatively narrow set of traditional career pathways. Our lack of creativity in defining the scholarly landscape is limiting our nation’s capacity for innovation by stifling exploration, out-of-the-box thinking, and new perspectives.
This does not have to be the case. The rise of the gig economy has positioned independent scholarship as an effective model for people who want to continue doing research outside of traditional academic structures, in ways that best fit their life priorities. New research institutes are emerging to support independent scholars and expand access to the knowledge economy.
The Biden-Harris Administration should further strengthen independent scholarship by (1) facilitating partnerships between independent scholarship institutions and conventional research entities; (2) creating professional-development opportunities for independent scholars; and (3) allocating more federal funding for independent scholarship.
Challenge and Opportunity
The academic sector is often seen as a rich source of new and groundbreaking ideas in the United States. But it has become increasingly evident that pinning all our nation’s hopes for innovation and scientific advancement on the academic sector is a mistake. Existing models of academic scholarship are limited, leaving little space for any exploration, out-of-the-box thinking, and new perspectives. Our nation’s universities, which are shedding full-time faculty positions at an alarming rate, no longer offer as reliable and attractive career opportunities for young thinkers as they once did. Conventional scholarly career pathways, which were initially created with male breadwinners in mind, are strewn with barriers to broad participation. But outside of academia, there is a distinct lack of market incentive structures that support geographically diverse development and implementation of new ideas.
These problems are compounded by the fact that conventional scholarly training pathways are long, expensive, and unforgiving. A doctoral program takes an average of 5.8 years and $115,000 to complete. The federal government spends $75 billion per year on financial assistance for students in higher education. Yet inflexible academic structures prevent our society from maximizing returns on these investments in human capital. Individuals who pursue and complete advanced scholarly training but then opt to take a break from the traditional academic pipeline — whether to raise a family, explore another career path, or deal with a personal crisis — can find it nearly impossible to return. This problem is especially pronounced among first-generation students, women of color, and low income groups. A 2020 study found that out of the 67% of Ph.D. students who wanted to stay in academia after completing their degree, only 30% of those people did. Outside of academia, though, there are few obvious ways for even highly trained individuals to contribute to the knowledge economy. The upshot is that every year, innumerable great ideas and scholarly contributions are lost because ideators and scholars lack suitable venues in which to share them.
Fortunately, an alternative model exists. The rise of the gig economy has positioned independent scholarship as a viable approach to work and research. Independent scholarship recognizes that research doesn’t have to be a full-time occupation, be conducted via academic employment, or require attainment of a certain degree. By being relatively free of productivity incentives (e.g., publish or perish), independent scholarship provides a flexible work model and career fluidity that allows people to pursue research interests alongside other life and career goals.
Online independent-scholarship institutes (ISIs) like the Ronin Institute, IGDORE, and others have recently emerged to support independent scholars. By providing an affiliation, a community, and a boost of confidence, such institutes empower independent scholars to do meaningful research. Indeed, the original perspectives and diverse life experiences that independent scholars bring to the table increase the likelihood that such scholars will engage in high-risk research that can deliver tremendous benefits to society.
But it is currently difficult for ISIs to help independent scholars reach their full potential. ISIs generally cannot provide affiliated individuals with access to resources like research ethics review boards, software licenses, laboratory space, scientific equipment, computing services, and libraries. There is also concern that without intentionally structuring ISIs around equity goals, ISIs will develop in ways that marginalize underrepresented groups. ISIs (and individuals affiliated with them) are often deemed ineligible for research grants, and/or are outcompeted for grants by well-recognized names and affiliations in academia. Finally, though independent scholarship is growing, there is still relatively little concrete data on who is engaging in independent scholarship, and how and why they are doing so.
Strengthening support for ISIs and their affiliates is a promising way to fast-track our nation towards needed innovation and technological advancements. Augmenting the U.S. knowledge-economy infrastructure with agile ISIs will pave the way for new and more flexible scholarly work models; spur greater diversity in scholarship; lift up those who might otherwise be lost Einsteins; and increase access to the knowledge economy as a whole.
Plan of Action
The Biden-Harris Administration should consider taking the following steps to strengthen independent scholarship in the United States:
- Facilitate partnerships between independent scholarship institutions and conventional research entities.
- Create professional-development opportunities for independent scholars.
- Allocate more federal funding for independent scholarship.
More detail on each of these recommendations is provided below.
1. Facilitate partnerships between ISIs and conventional research entities.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) could provide $200,000 to fund a Research Coordination Network or INCLUDES alliance of ISIs. This body would provide a forum for ISIs to articulate their main challenges and identify solutions specific to the conduct of independent research (see FAQ for a list) — solutions may include exploring Cooperative Research & Development Agreements (CRADAs) as mechanisms for accessing physical infrastructure needed for research. The body would help establish ISIs as recognized complements to traditional research facilities such as universities, national laboratories, and private-sector labs.
NSF could also include including ISIs in its proposed National Networks of Research Institutes (NNRIs). ISIs meet many of the criteria laid out for NNRI affiliates, including access to cross-sectoral partnerships (many independent scholars work in non-academic domains), untapped potential among diverse scholars who have been marginalized by — or who have made a choice to work outside of — conventional research environments, novel approaches to institutional management (such as community-based approaches), and a model that truly supports the “braided river” or ”ecosystem” career pathway model.
The overall goal of this recommendation is to build ISI capacity to be effective players in the broader knowledge-economy landscape.
2. Create professional-development opportunities for independent scholars.
To support professional development among ISIs, The U.S. Small Business Administration and/or the NSF America’s Seed Fund program could provide funding to help ISI staff develop their business models, including funding for training and coaching on leadership, institutional administration, financial management, communications, marketing, and institutional policymaking. To support professional development among independent scholars directly, the Office of Postsecondary Education at the Department of Education — in partnership with professional-development programs like Activate, the Department of Labor’s Wanto, and the Minority Business Development Agency — can help ISIs create professional-development programs customized towards the unique needs of independent scholars. Such programs would provide mentorship and apprenticeship opportunities for independent scholars (particularly for those underrepresented in the knowledge economy), led by scholars experienced with working outside of conventional academia.
The overall goal of this recommendation is to help ISIs and individuals create and pursue viable work models for independent scholarship.
3. Allocate more federal funding for independent scholarship.
Federal funding agencies like NSF struggle to diversify the types of projects they support, despite offering funding for exploratory high-risk work and for early-career faculty. A mere 4% of NSF funding is provided to “other” entities outside of private industry, federally supported research centers, and universities. But outside of the United States, independent scholarship is recognized and funded. NSF and other federal funding agencies should consider allocating more funding for independent scholarship. Funding opportunities should support individuals over institutions, have low barriers to entry, and prioritize provision of part-time funding over longer periods of time (rather than full funding for shorter periods of time).
Funding opportunities could include:
- Funding for seed-grant programs administered by ISIs. Federal agencies already have authority to support seed-grant programs — like the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA)’s impactful program at Earth Science Information Partners — as prizes competitions.
- Funding research awards for individual independent scholars. For instance, Congress could consider amending the 2021 Supporting Early-Career Researchers Act to allow NSF to award funding to researchers who are not affiliated with an “institution of higher education”, as well as to award part-time funding.
- An NSF program that exclusively funds innovative, high-risk research led by scholars outside of universities, federally supported research centers, and private-sector labs.
- An NSF-funded research effort to capture basic information about independent scholars in order to provide them with better support. The effort would strive to understand why independent scholars choose not to work with a conventional research institution, what their work models look like, and their greatest challenges and needs.
Conclusion
Our nation urgently needs more innovative, broadly sourced ideas. But limited traditional career options are discouraging participation in the knowledge economy. By strengthening independent scholarship institutes and independent scholarship generally, the Biden-Harris Administration can help quickly diversify and grow the pool of people participating in scholarship. This will in turn fast-track our nation towards much-needed scientific and technological advancements.
The traditional academic pathway consists of 4–5 years of undergraduate training (usually unfunded), 1–3 years for a master’s degree (sometimes funded; not always a precondition for enrollment in a doctoral program), 3–6+ years for a doctoral degree (often at least partly funded through paid assistantships), 2+ years of a postdoctoral position (fully funded at internship salary levels), and 5–7 years to complete the tenure-track process culminating in appointment to an Associate Professor position (fully funded at professional salary levels).
Independent scholarship in any academic field is, as defined by the Effective Altruism Forum, scholarship “conducted by an individual who is not employed by any organization or institution, or who is employed but is conducting this research separately from that”.
Independent scholars can draw on their varied backgrounds and professional experience to bring fresh and diverse worldviews and networks to research projects. Independent scholars often bring a community-oriented and collaborative approach to their work, which is helpful for tackling pressing transdisciplinary social issues. For students and mentees, independent scholars can provide connections to valuable field experiences, practicums, research apprenticeships, and career-development opportunities. In comparison to their academic colleagues, many independent scholars have more time flexibility, and are less prone to being influenced by typical academic incentives (e.g., publish or perish). As such, independent scholars often demonstrate long-term thinking in their research, and may be more motivated to work on research that they feel personally inspired by.
An ISI is a legal entity or organization (e.g, a nonprofit) that offers an affiliation for people conducting independent scholarship. ISIs can take the form of research institutes, scholarly communities, cooperatives, and others. Different ISIs can have different goals, such as emphasizing work within a specific domain or developing different ways of doing scholarship. Many ISIs exist solely online, which allows them to function in very low-cost ways while retaining a broad diversity of members. Independent scholarship institutes differ from professional societies, which do not provide an affiliation for individual researchers.
As the Ronin Institute explains, federal grant agencies and many foundations in the United States restrict their support to individuals affiliated with legally recognized classes of institutions, such as nonprofits. For individual donors, donations made to independent scholars via nonprofits are tax-deductible. Being affiliated with a nonprofit dedicated to supporting independent scholars enables those scholars to access the funding needed for research. In addition, many independent scholars find value in being part of a community of like-minded individuals with whom they can collaborate and share experiences and expertise.
- Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars (Canada)
- Independent Scholars Association of Australia (Canada)
- Slowopen Science Laboratory (France)
- Campus Orléon (Netherlands)
- Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education (Sweden)
- Complex Biological Systems Alliance (United States)
- Institute for Historical Study (United States)
- Integrated Behavioral Health Research Institute (United States)
- Minnesota Independent Scholars’ Forum (United States)
- Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship (United States)
- San Diego Independent Scholars (United States)
- Postdoctoral Institute for Computational Studies (United States)
- Princeton Research Forum (United States)
Universities are designed to support large complex grants requiring considerable infrastructure and full-time support staff; their incentive structures for faculty and students mirror these needs. In contrast, research conducted through an independent-scholarship model is often part-time, inexpensive, and conducted by already trained researchers with little more than a personal computer. With their mostly online structures, ISIs can be very cost effective. They have agile and flexible frameworks, with limited bureaucracy and fewer competing priorities. ISIs are best positioned to manage grants that are stand alone, can be administered with lower indirect rates, require little physical research infrastructure, and fund individuals partnering with collaborators at universities. While toxic academic environments often push women and minority groups out of universities and academia, agile ISIs can take swift and decisive action to construct healthier work environments that are more welcoming of non-traditional career trajectories. These qualities make ISIs great places for testing high-risk, novel ideas.
Options include:
- Agreements to share library resources.
- Multi-institution consortia, including consortia established to serve specific regional missions. Here are examples of US consortia.
- Memoranda of understanding that formalize a variety of institutional-level collaborations, such as collaborations in which university-run Institutional Review Boards (IRB) for research ethics review serve as external IRBs for other types of entities.
- Cooperative Research & Development Agreements (CRADAs) providing avenues for non-federal parties to access the physical research infrastructure that exist at federal laboratories.
Creating a Public System of National Laboratory Schools
Summary
The computational revolution enables and requires an ambitious reimagining of public high-school and community-college designs, curricula, and educator-training programs. In light of a much-changed — and much-changing — society, we as a nation must revisit basic assumptions about what constitutes a “good” education. That means re-considering whether traditional school schedules still make sense, updating outdated curricula to emphasize in-demand skills (like computer programming), bringing current perspectives to old subjects (like computational biology); and piloting new pedagogies (like project-based approaches) better aligned to modern workplaces. To do this, the Federal Government should establish a system of National Laboratory Schools in parallel to its existing system of Federally Funded Research & Development Centers (FFRDCs).
The National Science Foundation (NSF) should lead this work, partnering with the Department of Education (ED) to create a Division for School Invention (DSI) within its Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate. The DSI would act as a platform analogous to the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, catalyzing Laboratory Schools by providing funding and technical guidance to federal, state, and local entities pursuing educational or cluster-based workforce-development initiatives.
The new Laboratory Schools would take inspiration from successful, vertically-integrated research and design institutes like Xerox PARC and the Mayo Clinic in how they organized research, as well as from educational systems like Governor’s Schools and Early College High Schools in how they organized their governance. Each Laboratory School would work with a small, demographically and academically representative cohort financially sustainable on local per-capita education budgets.
Collectively, National Laboratory Schools would offer much-needed “public sandboxes” to develop and demonstrate novel school designs, curricula, and educator-training programs rethinking both what and how people learn in a computational future.
Challenge and Opportunity
Education is fundamental to individual liberty and national competitiveness. But the United States’ investment in advancing the state of the art is falling behind.
Innovation in educational practice has been incremental. Neither the standards-based nor charter-school movements departed significantly from traditional models. Accountability and outcomes-based incentives like No Child Left Behind suffer from the same issue.
The situation in research is not much better: NSF and ED’s combined spending on education research is barely twice the research and development budget of Nintendo. And most of that research focuses on refining traditional school models (e.g. presuming 50-minute classes and traditional course sequences).
Despite all these efforts, we are still seeing unprecedented declines in students’ math and reading scores.
Meanwhile, the computational revolution is widening the gap between what school teaches and the skills needed in a world where work is increasingly creative, collaborative, and computational. Computation’s role in culture, commerce, and national security is rapidly expanding; computational approaches are transforming disciplines from math and physics to history and art. School can’t keep up.
For years, research has told us individualized, competency- and project-based approaches can reverse academic declines while aligning with the demands of industry and academia for critical thinking, collaboration, and creative problem-solving skills. But schools lack the capacity to follow suit.
Clearly, we need a different approach to research and development in education: We need prototypes, not publications. While studies evaluating and improving existing schools and approaches have their place, there is a real need now for “living laboratories” that develop and demonstrate wholly transformative educational approaches.
Schools cannot do this on their own. Constitutionally and financially, education is federated to states and districts. No single public actor has the incentives, expertise, and resources to tackle ambitious research and design — much less to translate into research to practice on a meaningful scale. Private actors like curriculum developers or educational technologists sell to public actors, meaning private sector innovation is constrained by public school models. Graduate schools of education won’t take the brand risk of running their own schools, and researchers won’t pursue unfunded or unpublishable questions. We commend the Biden-Harris administration’s Multi-Agency Research and Development Priorities for centering inclusive innovation and science, technology, education, and math (STEM) education in the nation’s policy agenda. But reinventing school requires a new kind of research institution, one which actually operates a school, developing educators and new approaches firsthand.Luckily, the United States largely invented the modern research institution. It is time we do so again. Much as our nation’s leadership in science and technology was propelled by the establishment ofland-grant universities in the late 19th century, we can trigger a new era of U.S. leadership in education by establishing a system of National Laboratory Schools. The Laboratory Schools will serve as vertically integrated “sandboxes” built atop fully functioning high schools and community colleges, reinventing how students learn and how we develop in a computational future.
Plan of Action
To catalyze a system of National Laboratory Schools, the NSF should establish a Division for School Invention (DSI) within its Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) directorate. With an annually escalating investment over five years (starting at $25 million in FY22 and increasing to $400 million by FY26), the DSI could support development of 100 Laboratory Schools nationwide.
The DSI would support federal, state, and local entities — and their partners — in pursuing education or cluster-based workforce-development initiatives that (i) center computational capacities, (ii) emphasize economic inclusion or racial diversity, and (iii) could benefit from a high-school or community-college component.
DSI support would entail:
- Competitive matching grants modeled on SBIR grants. These grants would go towards launching Laboratory Schools and sustaining those that demonstrate success.
- Technical guidance to help Laboratory Schools (i) innovate while maintaining regulatory compliance, and (ii) develop financial models workable on local education budgets.
- Accreditation support, working with partner executives (e.g., Chairs of Boards of Higher Education) where appropriate, to help Laboratory Schools establish relationships with accreditors, explain their educational models, and document teacher and student work for evaluation purposes.
- Responsible-research support, including providing Laboratory Schools assistance with obtainingFederalwide Assurance (FWA) and access to partners’ Institutional Review Boards (IRBs).
- Convening and storytelling, raising awareness of and interest in Laboratory Schools’ mission and operations.
Launching at least ten National Laboratory Schools by FY23 would involve three primary steps. First, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) should convene an expert group comprised of (i) funders with a track record of attempting radical change in education and (ii) computational domain experts to design an evaluation process for the DSI’s competitive grants, secure industry and academic partners to help generate interest in the National Laboratory School System, and recruit the DSI’s first Director.
In parallel, Congress should issue one appropriations report asking NSF to establish a $25 million per year pilot Laboratory School program aligned with the NSF Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP)’s Regional Innovation Accelerators (RIA)’s Areas of Investment. Congress should issue a second appropriations report asking the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) to release a Dear Colleague letter encouraging states that have spent less than 75% of their Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) or American Recovery Plan funding to propose a Laboratory School.
Finally, the White House should work closely with the DSI’s first Director to convene the Department of Defense Education Activity (DDoEA) and National Governors Association (NGA) to recruit partners for the National Laboratory Schools program. These partners would later be responsible for operational details like:
- Vetting or establishing an independent, state-level organization to receive federal funding and act as the primary liaison to the DSI.
- Giving the organization the matching funds needed to access DSI funding.
- Ensuring that the organization maintains a board that includes at least one community-college leader, two youth workers or high-school leaders, one representative from the state department of education, and two computation domain experts (one from industry and one from academia). Board size should not exceed eight members.
- Providing DSI with the necessary access and support to ensure that appropriate and sufficient data are collected for evaluation and learning purposes.
- Partnering with philanthropic actors to fund competitive grant programs that ultimately incentivize district and charter schools to adopt and adapt successful curricula and models developed by Laboratory Schools.
Focus will be key for this initiative. The DSI should exclusively support efforts that center:
- New public schools, not programs within (or reinventions of) existing schools.
- Radically different designs, not incremental evolutions.
- Computationally rich models that integrate computation and other modern skills into all subjects.
- Inclusive innovation focused on transforming outcomes for the poor and historically marginalized.
Conclusion
Imagine the pencil has just been invented, and we treated it the way we’ve treated computers in education. “Pencil class” and “pencil labs” would prepare people for a written future. We would debate the cost and benefit of one pencil per child. We would study how oral test performance changed when introducing one pencil per classroom, or after an after-school creative-writing program.
This all sounds stupid because the pencil and writing are integrated throughout our educational systems rather than being considered individually. The pencil transforms both what and how we learn, but only when embraced as a foundational piece of the educational experience.
Yet this siloed approach is precisely the approach our educational system takes to computers and the computational revolution. In some ways, this is no great surprise. The federated U.S. school system isn’t designed to support invention, and research incentives favor studying and suggesting incremental improvements to existing school systems rather than reimagining education from the ground up. If we as a nation want to lead on education in the same way that we lead on science and technology, we must create laboratories to support school experimentation in the same way that we establish laboratories to support experimentation across STEM fields. Certainly, the federal government shouldn’t run our schools. But just as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) support cutting-edge research that informs evolving healthcare practices, so too should the federal government support cutting-edge research that informs evolving educational practices. By establishing a National Laboratory School system, the federal government will take the risk and make the investments our communities can’t on their own to realize a vision of an equitable, computationally rich future for our schools and students.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who
1. Why is the federal government the right entity to lead on a National Laboratory School system?
Transformative education research is slow (human development takes a long time, as does assessing how a given intervention changes outcomes), laborious (securing permissions to test an intervention in a real-world setting is often difficult), and resource-intensive (many ambitious ideas require running a redesigned school to explore properly). When other fields confront such obstacles, the public and philanthropic sectors step in to subsidize research (e.g., by funding large research facilities). But tangible education-research infrastructure does not exist in the United States.
Without R&D demonstrating new models (and solving the myriad problems of actual implementation), other public- and private-sector actors will continue to invest solely in supporting existing school models. No private sector actor will create a product for schools that don’t exist, no district has the bandwidth and resources to do it themselves, no state is incentivized to tackle the problem, and no philanthropic actor will fund an effort with a long, unclear path to adoption and prominence.
National Laboratory Schools are intended primarily as research, development, and demonstration efforts, meaning that they will be staffed largely by researchers and will pursue research agendas that go beyond the traditional responsibilities and expertise of local school districts. State and local actors are the right entities to design and operate these schools so that they reflect the particular priorities and strengths of local communities, and so that each school is well positioned to influence local practice. But funding and overseeing the National Laboratory School system as a whole is an appropriate role for the federal government.
2. Why is NSF the right agency to lead this work?
For many years, NSF has developed substantial expertise funding innovation through the SBIR/STTR programs, which award staged grants to support innovation and technology transfer. NSF also has experience researching education through its Directorate for Education and Human Resources (HER). Finally, NSF’s new Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) has a mandate to “[create] education pathways for every American to pursue new, high-wage, good-quality jobs, supporting a diverse workforce of researchers, practitioners, and entrepreneurs.” NSF is the right agency to lead the National Laboratory Schools program because of its unique combination of experience, in-house expertise, mission relevance, and relationships with agencies, industry, and academia.
3. What role will OSTP play in establishing the National Laboratory School program? Why should they help lead the program instead of ED?
ED focuses on the concerns and priorities of existing schools. Ensuring that National Laboratory Schools emphasize invention and reimagining of educational models requires fresh strategic thinking and partnerships grounded in computational domain expertise.
OSTP has access to bodies like the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). Working with these bodies, OSTP can easily convene high-profile leaders in computation from industry and academia to publicize and support the National Laboratory Schools program. OSTP can also enlist domain experts who can act as advisors evaluating and critiquing the depth of computational work developed in the Laboratory Schools. And annually, in the spirit of the White House Science Fair, OSTP could host a festival showcasing the design, practices, and outputs of various Laboratory Schools.
Though OSTP and NSF will have primary leadership responsibilities for the National Laboratory Schools program, we expect that ED will still be involved as a key partner on topics aligned with ED’s core competencies (e.g., regulatory compliance, traditional best practices, responsible research practices, etc.).
4. What makes the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) an especially good partner for this work?
The DoDEA is an especially good partner because it is the only federal agency that already operates schools; reaches a student base that is large (more than 70,000 students, of whom more than 12,000 are high-school aged) as well as academically, socioeconomically, and demographically diverse; more nimble than a traditional district; in a position to appreciate and understand the full ramifications of the computational revolution; and very motivated to improve school quality and reduce turnover
5. Why should the Division for School Invention (DSI) be situated within NSF’s TIP Directorate rather than EHR Directorate?
EHR has historically focused on the important work of researching (and to some extent, improving) existing schools. The DSI’s focus on invention, secondary/postsecondary education, and opportunities for alignment between cluster-based workforce-development strategies and Laboratory Schools’ computational emphasis make the DSI a much better fit for the TIP, which is not only focused on innovation and invention overall, but is also explicitly tasked with “[creating] education pathways for every American to pursue new, high-wage, good-quality jobs, supporting a diverse workforce of researchers, practitioners, and entrepreneurs.” Situating the DSI within TIP will not preclude DSI from drawing on EHR’s considerable expertise when needed, especially for evaluating, contextualizing, and supporting the research agendas of Laboratory Schools.
6. Why shouldn’t existing public schools be eligible to serve as Laboratory Schools?
Most attempts at organizational change fail. Invention requires starting fresh. Allowing existing public schools or districts to launch Laboratory Schools will distract from the ongoing educational missions of those schools and is unlikely to lead to effective invention.
7. Who are some appropriate partners for the National Laboratory School program?
Possible partners include:
- A federal, state, or local agency that already sponsors a workforce-development initiative pursuing a cluster-based strategy: i.e., an initiative that might benefit from a Laboratory School as part of an attempt to address, for instance, talent-pipeline challenges.
- A federal, state, or local agency that already sponsors an education-innovation initiative: e.g., a state public university that may wish to establish a National Laboratory School as a foundation for a forward-looking graduate school of education.
- A state department of education seeking to lead by example to incubate local educational innovation.
- A local school district committed to educational transformation that is interested in supporting a National Laboratory School and intentionally transplanting its practices into district schools over time.
8. What should the profile of a team or organization starting a Laboratory School look like? Where and how will partners find these people?
At a minimum, the team should have experience working with youth, possess domain expertise in computation, be comfortable supporting both technical and expressive applications of computation, and have a clear vision for the practical operation of their proposed educational model across both the humanities and technical fields.
Ideally, the team should also have piloted versions of their proposed educational model approach in some form, such as through after-school programs or at a summer camp. Piloting novel educational models can be hard, so the DSI and/or its partners may want to consider providing tiered grants to support this kind of prototyping and develop a pipeline of candidates for running a Laboratory School.
To identify candidates to launch and operate a Laboratory School, the DSI and/or its partners can:
- Partner with philanthropists in education to tap into preexisting networks.
- Pursue a basic press and messaging strategy through op-eds in relevant publications.
- Host well-publicized competitions (akin to the XQ Super School competition) to encourage development of novel educational models.
- Partner with graduate schools of education and departments of computer science to identify candidates and advertise the opportunity.
What
1. What is computational thinking, and how is it different from programming or computer science?
A good way to answer this question is to consider writing as an analogy. Writing is a tool for thought that can be used to think critically, persuade, illustrate, and so on. Becoming a skilled writer starts with learning the alphabet and basic grammar, and can include craft elements like penmanship. But the practice of writing is distinct from the thinking one does with those skills. Similarly, programming is analogous to mechanical writing skills, while computer science is analogous to the broader field of linguistics. These are valuable skills, but are a very particular slice of what the computational revolution entails.
Both programming and computer science are distinct from computational thinking. Computational thinking refers to thinking with computers, rather than thinking about how to communicate problems and questions and models to computers. Examples in other fields include:
- In math: computational approaches to algebra can embrace parallels between variables in mathematics and variables in programming, shifting the focus of algebra classes from symbolic manipulation—which computers are good at—to conceptual understanding. Other subjects normally considered “advanced”—like discrete mathematics and linear algebra—are made accessible to a much broader audience by computational approaches. But current algebra curricula emphasize ideas and approaches appropriate to pencil, paper, and blackboard.
- In life sciences: computational approaches have transformed the practice of biomedical science and research with machine learning accelerating this trend, creating whole fields like bioinformatics and systems biology. But the content and form of biology class in high school remains largely unchanged.
- In economics and social sciences: increasing data availability is transforming these fields alongside increasingly sophisticated computational approaches for evaluating and making sense of these data—including approaches that center computational and mathematical constructs like graphs to represent social networks. And still, social studies, psychology, US history and government classes all look much as they did twenty years ago.
These transitions each involve programming, but are no more “about” computer science than a philosophy class is “about” writing. Programming is the tool, not the topic.
2. What are some examples of the research questions that National Laboratory Schools would investigate?
There are countless research agendas that could be pursued through this new infrastructure. Select examples include:
- Seymour Papert’s work on LOGO (captured in books like Mindstorms) presented a radically different vision for the potential and role for technology in learning. In Mindstorms, Papert sketches out that vision vis a vis geometry as an existence proof. Papert’s work demonstrates that research into making things more learnable differs from researching how to teach more effectively. Abelson and diSessa’s Turtle Geometry takes Papert’s work further, conceiving of ways that computational tools can be used to introduce differential geometry and topology to middle- and high-schoolers. The National Laboratory Schools could investigate how we might design integrated curricula combining geometry, physics, and mathematics by leveraging the fact that the vast majority of mathematical ideas tackled in secondary contexts appear in computational treatments of shape and motion.
- The Picturing to Learn program demonstrated remarkable results in helping staff to identify and students to articulate conceptions and misconceptions. The National Laboratory Schools could investigate how to take advantage of the explosion of interactive and dynamic media now available for visually thinking and animating mental models across disciplines.
- Bond graphs as a representation of physical dynamic systems were developed in the 1960s. These graphs enabled identification of “effort” and “flow” variables as new ways of defining power. This in turn allowed us to formalize analogies across electricity and magnetism, mechanics, fluid dynamics, and so on. Decades later, category theory has brought additional mathematical tools to bear on further formalizing these analogies. Given the role of analogy in learning, how could we reconceive people’s introduction to natural sciences in cross-disciplinary language emphasizing these formal parallels.
- Understanding what it means for one thing to cause (or not cause) another, and how we attempt to establish whether this is empirically true is an urgent and omnipresent need. Computational approaches have transformed economics and the social sciences: Whether COVID vaccine reliability, claims of election fraud, or the replication crisis in medicine and social science, our world is full of increasingly opaque systems and phenomena which our media environment is decreasingly equipped to tackle for and with us. An important tool in this work is the ability to reason about and evaluate empirical research effectively, which in turn depends on fundamental ideas about causality and how to evaluate the strength and likelihood of various claims. Graphical methods in statistics offer a new tool complementing traditional, easily misused ideas like p-values which dominate current introductions to statistics without leaving youth in a better position to meaningfully evaluate and understand statistical inference.
The specifics of these are less important than the fact that there are many, many such agendas that go largely unexplored because we lack the tangible infrastructure to set ambitious, computationally sophisticated educational research agendas.
3. How will the National Laboratory Schools differ from magnet schools for those interested in computer science?
The premise of the National Laboratory Schools is that computation, like writing, can transform many subjects. These schools won’t place disproportionate emphasis on the field of computer science, but rather will emphasize integration of computational thinking into all disciplines—and educational practice as a whole. Moreover, magnet schools often use selective enrollment in their admissions. National Laboratory Schools are public schools interested in the core issues of the median public school, and therefore it is important they tackle the full range of challenges and opportunities that public schools face. This involves enrolling a socioeconomically, demographically, and academically diverse group of youth.
4. How will the National Laboratory Schools differ from the Institute for Education Science’s Regional Education Laboratories?
The Institute for Education’s (IES’s) Regional Education Laboratories (RELs) do not operate schools. Instead, they convene and partner with local policymakers to lead applied research and development, often focused on actionable best practices for today’s schools (as exemplified by the What Works Clearinghouse). This is a valuable service for educators and policymakers. However, this service is by definition limited to existing school models and assumptions about education. It does not attempt to pioneer new school models or curricula.
5. How will the National Laboratory Schools program differ from tech-focused workforce-development initiatives, coding bootcamps, and similar programs?
These types of programs focus on the training and placement of software engineers, data scientists, user-experience designers, and similar tech professionals. But just as computational thinking is broader than just programming, the National Laboratory Schools program is broader than vocational training (important as that may be). The National Laboratory Schools program is about rethinking school in light of the computational revolution’s effect on all subjects, as well as its effects on how school could or should operate. An increased sensitivity to vocational opportunities in software is only a small piece of that.
6. Can computation really change classes other than math and science?
Yes. The easiest way to prove this is to consider how professional practice of non-STEM fields has been transformed by computation. In economics, the role of data has become increasingly prominent in both research and decision making. Data-driven approaches have similarly transformed social science, while also expanding the field’s remit to include specifically online, computational phenomena (like social networks). Politics is increasingly dominated by technological questions, such as hacking and election interference. 3D modeling, animation, computational art, and electronic music are just a few examples of the computational revolution in the arts. In English and language arts, multimedia forms of narrative and commentary (e.g., podcasts, audiobooks, YouTube channels, social media, etc.) are augmenting traditional books, essays, and poems.
7. Why and how should National Laboratory Schools commit to financial and legal parity with public schools?
The challenges facing public schools are not purely pedagogical. Public schools face challenges in serving diverse populations in resource-constrained and highly regulated environments. Solutions and innovation in education need to be prototyped in realistic model systems. Hence the National Laboratory Schools must commit to financial and legal parity with public schools. At a minimum, this should include a commitment to (i) a per-capita student cost that is no more than twice the average of the relevant catchment area for a given National Laboratory School (the 2x buffer is provided to accommodate the inevitably higher cost of prototyping educational practices at a small scale), and (ii) enrollment that is demographically and academically representative (including special-education and English Language Learner participation) of a similarly aged population within thirty minutes’ commute, and that is enrolled through a weighted lottery or similarly non-selective admissions process.
8. Why are Xerox PARC and the Mayo Clinic good models for this initiative?
Both Xerox PARC and the Mayo Clinic are prototypical examples of hyper-creative, highly-functioning research and development laboratories. Key to their success inventing the future was living it themselves.
PARC researchers insisted on not only building but using their creations as their main computing systems. In doing so, they were able to invent everything from ethernet and the laser printer to the whole paradigm of personal computing (including peripherals like the modern mouse and features like windowed applications that we take for granted today).
The Mayo Clinic runs an actual hospital. This allows the clinic to innovate freely in everything from management to medicine. As a result, the clinic created the first multi-specialty group practice and integrated medical record system, invented the oxygen mask and G-suit, discovered cortisone, and performed the first hip replacement.
One characteristic these two institutions share is that they are focused on applied design research rather than basic science. PARC combined basic innovations in microelectronics and user interface to realize a vision of personal computing. Mayo rethinks how to organize and capitalize on medical expertise to invent new workflows, devices, and more.
These kinds of living laboratories are informed by what happens outside their walls but are focused on inventing new things within. National Laboratory Schools should similarly strive to demonstrate the future in real-world operation.
Why?
1. Don’t laboratory schools already exist? Like at the University of Chicago?
Yes. But there are very few of them, and almost all of those that do exist suffer from one or more issues relative to the vision proposed herein for National Laboratory Schools. First, most existing laboratory schools are not public. In fact, most university-affiliated laboratory schools have, over time, evolved to mainly serve faculty’s children. This means that their enrollment is not socioeconomically, demographically, or academically representative. It also means that families’ risk aversion may constrain those schools’ capacity to truly innovate. Most laboratory schools not affiliated with a university use their “laboratory” status as a brand differentiator in the progressive independent-school sector.
Second, the research functions of many laboratory schools have been hollowed out given the absence of robust funding. These schools may engage in shallow renditions of participatory action research by faculty in lieu of meaningful, ambitious research efforts.
Third, most educational-design questions investigated by laboratory schools are investigated at the classroom or curriculum (rather than school design) level. This creates tension between those seeking to test innovative practices (e.g., a lesson plan that involves an extended project) and the constraints of traditional classrooms.
Finally, insofar as bona fide research does happen, it is constrained by what is funded, publishable, and tenurable within traditional graduate schools of education. Hence most research reflects the concerns of existing schools instead of seeking to reimagine school design and educational practice.
2. Why will National Laboratory Schools succeed where past efforts at educational reform (e.g., charter schools) have failed?
Most past educational-reform initiatives have focused on either supporting and improving existing schools (e.g., through improved curricula for standard classes), or on subsidizing and supporting new schools (e.g., charter schools) that represent only minor departures from traditional models.
The National Laboratory Schools program will provide a new research, design, and development infrastructure for inventing new school models, curricula, and educator training. These schools will have resources, in-house expertise, and research priorities that traditional public schools—whether district or charter or pilot—do not and should not. If the National Laboratory Schools are successful, their output will help inform educational practice across the U.S. school ecosystem.
3. Don’t charter schools and pilot schools already support experimentation? Wasn’t that the original idea for charter and pilot schools—that they’d be a laboratory to funnel innovation back into public schools?
Yes, but this transfer hasn’t happened for at least two reasons. First, the vast majority of charter and pilot schools are not pursuing fundamentally new models because doing so is too costly and risky. Charter schools can often perform more effectively than traditional public schools, but this is just as often because of problematic selection bias in enrollment as it is because the autonomy they’re given allows for more effective leadership and organizational management. Second, the politics around charter and pilots has become increasingly toxic in many places, which prevents new ideas from being considered by public schools or advocated for effectively by public leaders.
4. Why do we need invention at the school rather than at the classroom level? Wouldn’t it be better to figure out how to improve schools that exist rather than end up with some unworkable model that most districts can’t adopt?
The solutions we need might not exist at the classroom level. We invest a great deal of time, money, and effort into improving existing schools. But we underinvest in inventing fundamentally different schools. There are many design choices which we need to explore which cannot be adequately developed through marginal improvements to existing models. One example is project-based learning, wherein students undertake significant, often multidisciplinary projects to develop their skills. Project-based learning at any serious level requires significant blocks of time that don’t fit in traditional school schedules and calendars. A second example is the role of computational thinking, as centered in this proposal. Meaningfully incorporating computational approaches into a school design requires new pedagogies, developing novel tools and curricula, and re-training staff. Vanishingly few organizations do this kind of work as a result.
If and when National Laboratory Schools develop substantially innovative models that demonstrate significant value, there will surely need to be a translation process to enable districts to adopt these innovations, much as translational medicine brings biomedical innovations from the lab to the hospital. That process will likely need to involve helping districts start and grow new schools gradually, rather then district-wide overhauls.
5. What kinds of “traditional assumptions” need to be revisited at the school level?
The basic model of school assumes subject-based classes with traditionally licensed teachers lecturing in each class for 40–90 minutes a day. Students do homework, take quizzes and tests, and occasionally do labs or projects. The courses taught are largely fixed, with some flexibility around the edges (e.g., through electives and during students’ junior and senior high-school years).
Traditional school represents a compromise among curriculum developers, standardized-testing outfits, teacher-licensure programs, regulations, local stakeholder politics, and teachers’ unions. Attempts to change traditional schools almost always fail because of pressures from one or more of these groups. The only way to achieve meaningful educational reform is to demonstrate success in a school environment rethought from the ground up. Consider a typical course sequence of Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, and Calculus. There are both pedagogical and vocational reasons to rethink this sequence and instead center types of mathematics that are more useful in computational contexts (like discrete mathematics and linear algebra). But a typical school will not be able to simultaneously develop the new tools, materials, and teachers needed to do so.
6. Has anything like the National Laboratory School program been tried before?
No. There have been various attempts to promote research in education without starting new schools. There have been interesting attempts by states to start new schools (like Governor’s Schools),there have been some ambitious charter schools, and there have been attempts to create STEM-focused and computationally focused magnet schools. But there has never been a concerted attempt in the United States to establish a new kind of research infrastructure built atop the foundation of functioning schools as educational “sandboxes”.
How?
1. How will we pay for all this? What existing funding streams will support this work? Where will the rest of the money for this program come from?
For budgeting purposes, assume that each Laboratory School enrolls a small group of forty high school or community college students full-time at an average per capita rate of $40,000 per person per year. Half of that budget will support the functioning of schools themselves. The remaining half will support a small research and development team responsible for curating and developing the computational tools, materials, and curricula needed to support the School’s educators. This would put the direct service budget of the school solidly at the 80th percentile of current per capita spending on K–12 education in the United States.With these assumptions, running 100 National Laboratory Schools would cost ~$160 million. Investing $25 million per year would be sufficient to establish an initial 15 sites. This initial federal funding should be awarded through a 1:1 matching competitive-grant program funded by (i) the 10% of American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act (ACWIA) Fees associated with H1-B visas (which the NSF is statutorily required to devote to public-private partnerships advancing STEM education), and (ii) the NSF TIP Directorate’s budget, alongside budgets from partner agency programs (for instance, the Department of Education’s Education Innovation and Research and Investing in Innovation programs). For many states, these funds should also be layered atop their existing Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) and American Rescue Plan (ARP) awards.
2. Why is vertical integration important? Do we really need to run schools to figure things out?
Vertical integration (of research, design, and operation of a school) is essential because schools and teacher education programs cannot be redesigned incrementally. Even when compelling curricular alternatives have been developed under the auspices of an organization like the NSF, practical challenges in bringing those innovations to practice have proven insurmountable. In healthcare, the entire field of translational medicine exists to help translate research into practice. Education has no equivalent.
The vertically integrated National Laboratory School system will address this gap by allowing experimenters to control all relevant aspects of the learning environment, curricula, staffing, schedules, evaluation mechanisms, and so on. This means the Laboratory Schools can demonstrate a fundamentally different approach, learning from great research labs like Xerox PARC and the Mayo Clinic, much of whose success depended on tightly-knit, cross-disciplinary teams working closely together in an integrated environment.
3. What would the responsibilities of a participating agency look like in a typical National Laboratory School partnership?
A participating agency will have some sort of educational or workforce-development initiative that would benefit from the addition of a National Laboratory School as a component. This agency would minimally be responsible for:
- Vetting or establishing an independent, state-level organization to receive federal funding and act as the primary liaison to the DSI.
- Giving the organization the matching funds needed to access DSI funding.
- Ensuring that the organization maintains a board that includes at least one community-college leader, two youth workers or high-school leaders, one representative from the state department of education, and two computation domain experts (one from industry and one from academia). Board size should typically not exceed eight members.
- Providing DSI with the necessary access and support to ensure that appropriate and sufficient data are collected for evaluation and learning purposes.
- Partnering with philanthropic actors to fund competitive grant programs that ultimately incentivize district and charter schools to adopt and adapt successful curricula and models developed by Laboratory Schools.
4. How should success for individual Laboratory Schools be defined?
Working with the Institute of Education Sciences (IES)’ National Center for Education Research(NCER), the DSI should develop frameworks for collecting necessary qualitative and quantitative data to document, understand, and evaluate the design of any given Laboratory School. Evaluation would include evaluation of compliance with financial and legal parity requirements as well as evaluation of student growth and work products.
Evaluation processes should include:
- Comprehensive process and product documentation of teachers’ and students’ work.
- Mappings of that work back onto traditional academic standards (e.g., Common Core Mathematics and English Language Arts standards).
- Financial audits of a School’s operation to evaluate resource-allocation decisions.
- Enrollment and retention audits that document the socioeconomic, demographic, and academic composition of School cohorts.
- An annual report produced by the School describing its model and the primary questions and challenges confronted that year.
- A common (i.e., across the National Laboratory School system) series of diagnostic/formative assessments to evaluate student numeracy and literacy. These assessments should be designed and administered by the DSI and its partners. Assessments should not be overly burdensome or time-consuming for School staff or students, so that the assessment process does not detract from the innovation and experimentation missions of the National Laboratory School system.
Success should be judged by a panel of experts that includes domain experts, youthworkers and/or school leaders, and DSI leadership. Dimensions of performance these panels should address should minimally include depth and quality of students’ work, degree of traditional academic coverage, ambition and coherence of the research agenda (and progress on that research agenda), retention of an equitably composed student cohort, and growth (not absolute performance) on the diagnostic/formative assessments.In designing evaluation mechanisms, it will be essential to learn from failed accountability systems in public schools. Specifically:, it will be essential to avoid pushing National Laboratory Schools to optimize for the particular metrics and measurements used in the evaluation process. This means that the evaluation process should be largely based on holistic evaluations made by expert panels rather than fixed rubrics or similar inflexible mechanisms. Evaluation timescales should also be selected appropriately: e.g., performance on diagnostic/formative assessments should be measured by examining trends over several years rather than year-to-year changes.
5. What makes the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program a good model for the National Laboratory School program?
The SBIR program is a competitive grant competition wherein small businesses submit proposals to a multiphase grant program. SBIR awards smaller grants (~$150,000) to businesses at early stages of development, and makes larger grants (~$1 million) available to awardees who achieve certain progress milestones. SBIR and similar federal tiered-grant programs (e.g., the Small Business Technology Transfer, or STTR, program) have proven remarkably productive and cost-effective, with many studies highlighting that they are as or more efficient on a per-dollar basis when compared to the private sector via common measures of innovation like number of patents, papers, and so on.
The SBIR program is a good model for the National Laboratory School program; it is an example of the federal government promoting innovation by patching a hole in the funding landscape. Traditional financing options for businesses are often limited to debt or equity, and most providers of debt (like retail banks) for small businesses are rarely able or incentivized to subsidize research and development. Venture capitalists typically only subsidize research and development for businesses and technologies with reasonable expectations of delivering 10x or greater returns. SBIR provides funding for the innumerable businesses that need research and development support in order to become viable, but aren’t likely to deliver venture-scale returns.
In education, the funding landscape for research and development is even worse. There are virtually no sources of capital that support people to start schools, in part because the political climate around new schools can be so fraught. The funding that does exist for this purpose tends to demand school launch within 12–18 months: a timescale upon which it is not feasible to design, evaluate, refine an entirely new school model. Education is a slow, expensive public good: one that the federal government shouldn’t provision, but should certainly subsidize. That includes subsidizing the research and development needed to make education better.
States and local school districts lack the resources and incentives to fund such deep educational research. That is why the federal government should step in. By running a tiered educational research-grant program, the federal government will establish a clear pathway for prototyping and launching ambitious and innovative schools.
6. What protections will be in place for students enrolled in Laboratory Schools?
The state organizations established or selected to oversee Laboratory Schools will be responsible for approving proposed educational practices. That said, unlike in STEM fields, there is no “lab bench” for educational research: the only way we can advance the field as a whole is by carefully prototyping informed innovations with real students in real classrooms.
7. Considering the challenges and relatively low uptake of educational practices documented in the What Works Clearinghouse, how do we know that practices proven in National Laboratory Schools will become widely adopted?
National Laboratory Schools will yield at least three kinds of outputs, each of which is associated with different opportunities and challenges with respect to widespread adoption.
The first output is people. Faculty trained at National Laboratory Schools (and at possible educator-development programs run within the Schools) will be well positioned to take the practices and perspectives of National Laboratory Schools elsewhere (e.g., as school founders or department heads). The DSI should consider establishing programs to incentivize and support alumni personnel of National Laboratory Schools in disseminating their knowledge broadly, especially by founding schools.
The second output is tools and materials. New educational models that are responsive to the computational revolution will inevitably require new tools and materials—including subject-specific curricula, cross-disciplinary software tools for analysis and visualization, and organizational and administrative tools—to implement in practice. Many of these tools and materials will likely be adaptations and extensions of existing tools and materials to the needs of education.
The final output is new educational practices and models. This will be the hardest, but probably most important, output to disseminate broadly. The history of education reform is littered with failed attempts to scale or replicate new educational models. An educational model is best understood as the operating habits of a highly functioning school. Institutionalizing those habits is largely about developing the skills and culture of a school’s staff (especially its leadership). This is best tackled not as a problem of organizational transformation (e.g., attempting to retrofit existing schools), but rather one of organizational creation—that is, it is better to use models as inspirations to emulate as new schools (and new programs within schools) are planned. Over time, such new and inspired schools and programs will supplant older models.
8. How could the National Laboratory School program fail?
Examples of potential pitfalls that the DSI must strive to avoid include:
- Spreading resources too thinly. It is popular to claim to support innovation. Hence there are strong incentives for stakeholders to launch innovation initiatives but then hollow them out (in budgetary or other terms) by spreading resources too thinly across many different efforts.
- Premature scaling. It will be tempting for stakeholders to prioritize rapidly scaling efforts, proposing, for instance, to incubate a Laboratory School for only one to three years before “scaling up” the school to hundreds or thousands of students. But rapidly scaling up high-touch educational models (i.e. those involving significant teacher-student interactions and relationships) has never worked. Instead of emphasizing scale-up, the National Laboratory School program should emphasize building human capital (e.g., using schools to train teachers and leaders), developing tools and materials (e.g., curricula), and creating long-term partnerships to incubate and translate Laboratory Schools’ insights into practice.
- Incrementalism. It is risky to try to invent something new. It is much safer and more comfortable to merely improve or support things that exist. The National Laboratory School program must resist the temptation to develop “Band-Aid” solutions to fundamental problems with existing school models instead of inventing new models that might obviate those issues entirely.
- Impatience. Similarly, research and invention are fundamentally unpredictable, creative processes that often take many years of investment to bear fruit. If we knew what we needed to do in education, we wouldn’t need to invest in research in the first place. The funding landscape for research and reform in education is heavily weighted toward efforts carried out on a one to five year timeframe. The National Laboratory School program must remain committed to ambitious, longer-term initiatives.
- Neglecting the importance of team. When undertaking risky work, it can be tempting to only support all-star teams of established experts thought to have the greatest chance of success. But while expertise matters when it comes to developing entirely new school models, it is equally if not more important to actively bring in fresh voices and fresh perspectives. Furthermore, National Laboratory Schools are not theoretical, but practical. Their success will depend on committed, creative teams working closely together to create an excellent, operating learning environment. Building teams characterized by drive, creativity, and persistence will play an outsized role in the likelihood of success of any given Laboratory School.
- Neglecting the importance of domain expertise. In education, there is a tendency to treat teaching and learning as skills and activities that happen in a general, domain-agnostic way. In reality, one cannot think about thinking and learning without thinking about thinking and learning something. Innovations in tools, materials, human capital, and pedagogy almost certainly need to be domain-specific. Given the focus of the National Laboratory School program on the computational revolution and on integrating new computational approaches into traditional disciplines, it will be important to ensure that every level of the National Laboratory School program includes computational domain experts as well as experts in education and educational theory.
Creating a National Fellowship for Entrepreneurial Scientists and Engineers
Summary
The next administration should establish a national fellowship for scientists and engineers to accelerate the transformation of research discoveries into scalable, market-ready technologies. Entrepreneurship is driving innovation across the U.S. economy—with the troubling exception of early-stage science. Transitioning scientific discoveries from the laboratory into prototypes remains too speculative and costly to garner significant support from industry or venture-capital firms. This makes it difficult for many of our nation’s science innovators to translate their research into new products and puts the United States at risk of falling behind in the quickly evolving global economy.
Entrepreneurial fellowships for scientists and engineers have emerged as an effective strategy for translating research into new products and businesses, showing tremendous early impact and a readiness to scale. The next administration should advance this proven strategy at the federal level by creating a national entrepreneurial fellowship. This new entrepreneurial fellowship would leverage our nation’s investments in science to drive national prosperity, security, and global competitiveness.