On November 1, the National Board for Education Sciences, the advisory board to the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES), held its fall meeting where it approved IES’ new research priorities (PDF, 137 KB). IES Director John Easton indicated that these new priorities should make IES’ research more relevant to policymakers and practitioners in the field by encouraging partnerships between researchers and practitioners in the field. Concerns about IES’ reliance on randomized controlled trials were also addressed in the statement of priorities, which stated “the Institute will maintain rigorous scientific standards for the technical quality of its statistics, research, and evaluation activities, ensuring that the methods applied are appropriate to the questions asked and the results are valid and reliable. The work of the Institute will include a variety of research and statistical methods.”

The Institute's priorities continue to address a broad range of education-related outcomes for all students, including those with disabilities. These outcomes include: developmental outcomes for infants and toddlers with disabilities; school readiness; learning, achievement and higher order thinking in reading and writing, mathematics and the sciences from preschool through postsecondary schooling; behaviors, skills, and dispositions that support learning in school and later success in the workforce; and educational attainment in postsecondary, vocational and adult education.