Before leading the Alliance for Learning Innovation, I led the education, workforce, and talent policy portfolio at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and had the privilege of supporting FAS’s Education R&D Fellows — exceptionally talented individuals eager to apply their technical expertise to public service.
That’s how I met Katherine McEldoon and Alex Resch, FAS Innovation Fellows charged with helping stand up the bold, new Accelerate, Transform, and Scale (ATS) Initiative at the Institute of Education (IES). Katherine and Alex completed their tour of duty at IES last year and are now embarking on a new professional venture together. I chatted with Alex and Katherine to discuss their experience at IES, the origins of ATS and what sets it apart from other IES initiatives, and what they’re up to now.
How did each of you end up working at IES and how long were you there?
Alex: I had been working in education research and had done a lot of work with IES. I had a few projects where I worked more closely with school districts and those led me to worry that there was a disconnect between the research I was doing and the information district leaders and educators needed to do their jobs well. So I started doing more iterative work (e.g., rapid cycle evaluation, continuous improvement) and that led me to foundation-funded education R&D projects and especially thinking about when and how we use different kinds of evidence and different methods for producing that evidence.
A colleague sent me the FAS fellowship posting and I was immediately interested and applied. I started at IES in December 2023 and was there through May 2025.
Katherine: I was supporting evidence-based research and development as lead learning scientist at Pearson, but I was looking for a bigger opportunity to bring the right people together to do evidence-based research and development well. Through networking at SXSW EDU, I had several people encourage me to apply for a FAS fellowship to advise IES in growing their ARPA-like program on Ed R&D.
I joined IES in December 2023 and was there through July 2025.
What did your role entail?
Alex: The overarching goal for the fellowship was to support the development of ARPA-like activities at IES, which was being piloted as the Accelerate, Transform, Scale (ATS) Initiative within the National Center for Education Research (NCER). This work included strategic development of the ATS program, including supporting existing programs like 305T, SEERnet, and the LEARN Network, launching the new Seedlings to Scale program, and coordination with innovation-oriented programs across ED and the federal government. Erin Higgins was the program officer leading ATS and had been doing this work largely on her own, so coming in as fellows, Katherine and I gave a big capacity boost to the team.
What was it like to help grow the Accelerate, Transform, and Scale Initiative?
Katherine: It was exciting to design new programs alongside Erin Higgins and the IES leadership team towards this fresh bold vision. We started by really grounding our vision in the aim for the ATS Initiative: to transform the education R&D landscape, both across the IES community and more broadly, by fostering a collaborative, evidence-based ecosystem that not only bridges the gap but powers an R&D engine between research and practice. We then designed programs that would help achieve that. By being mindful of how the entire field needed to grow, we strategically developed programs that addressed existing gaps in the education R&D ecosystem, and developed incentives that are not naturally there in the marketplace.
We wanted to make sure that these programs would function as intended, so we were very detailed and thoughtful about articulating what this work would actually look like in practice so we could communicate to the field how precisely we were looking for something very different. We really wanted to see researchers and developers working together in concert.
What was the vision for ATS and what makes it different from other IES programs?
Alex: The authorizing language that guided the ATS Initiative in the FY 2023 congressional budget was “to invest in quick-turnaround high-reward, scalable solutions intended to improve education outcomes for all students.” This language pushed for an ARPA-inspired model for education R&D.
The traditional IES model is slow and steady, providing predictable funding streams for the next step in a research agenda. ATS is meant to take bigger swings, while also creating structures for responsible risk-taking (e.g., downselection at key milestones). What are some new ideas for how to address pressing problems? How can we make calculated risks on ideas that would have a big impact if they work, while still being good stewards of taxpayer dollars?
We were also very focused on thinking about scalability from the start. It’s not a good use of resources to develop products and interventions that are not designed for the realities of our education system, no matter how effective they could be in a controlled setting.
What is your hope for the future of ATS?
Katherine: My hope for the ATS Initiative is that it continues! There is such a need for fresh, effective educational solutions, and having a set of initiatives coming from IES will ensure that these programs are effective and grounded in the science of what works.
Alex: I feel like there’s a lot of uncertainty right now about how the federal government will support R&D, especially in education, so I’m not sure what to think about the ATS Initiative as it currently exists. But I hope that IES will continue to support R&D and continue to evolve their processes and capacity to better support this work.
What are you two up to now, and how can people support your work?
Katherine: We founded Align R&D, along with our other ATS Initiative colleagues Erin Higgins and Jessica Tsang, to continue this kind of work outside of ED.
At Align R&D, we are continuing to grow the education R&D ecosystem through funding strategy and management, coaching to build R&D capacity and rigor, and bringing together researchers, developers, and practitioners to do this work well, collectively. We’re still committed to the aims of the ATS Initiative, and are finding new ways to serve this mission.
We’d love to connect with others who are thinking about these challenges and are interested in building new systems and infrastructure. From strategy conversations to program management to capacity building workshops, or panels, reviews and advisory boards, please reach out. We’d love to discuss how we can work together.
Katherine McEldoon and Alex Resch are founding partners at Align R&D.
