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Learning Data Insights partnered with the Alliance for Learning Innovation to develop the Education R&D Funding Explorer, a tool designed to make federal education R&D funding data more transparent and actionable. The goal was to create a platform that could help policymakers and the public better understand how education R&D…

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program expired at the end of September due to a disagreement between Senator Ernst (R-IA) and Senator Markey (D-MA), the chair and ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. They disagree about the status of “SBIR mills” within the…

The Regional Educational Labs (RELs) were created as part of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Over the six decades since then, their mission and impact have been frequently questioned. Over the years, including in 2025, efforts have emerged to eliminate them stemming from a variety of challenges related…

Recent staffing and budget cuts at the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) threaten the nation’s capacity to generate and use high-quality education research—just when states, districts, and educators need it most to confront today’s urgent challenges. IES, the federal science agency within the U.S. Department of Education (ED), suffered the…

In Spring 2025, FullScale (formerly The Learning Accelerator) identified a critical need in the sector: leaders need support navigating and making sense of AI. Leveraging learnings from two of our major projects, the Exponential Learning Initiative and the School Teams AI Collaborative, we surfaced a driving question: What would it…

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is at a critical juncture. After decades of operating under an outdated research model characterized by five-year grants, $5 million budgets, and limited results, IES must fundamentally transform its approach to education R&D. This article outlines the principles, structures, and practices that should define…