The Dept. of ED’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES), has released a Request for Information (RFI) to “seek public input on how IES can modernize its programs, processes, and priorities.”
The RFI can be found at https://federalregister.gov/d/2025-18608.
For those that reply via the RFI, a reminder that all comments will be made publicly available on the Federal eRulemaking Portal and to not include personally identifiable information about others.
On September 25, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) released a Request for Information (RFI) as a part of its “comprehensive reexamination to ensure that its core functions—research, statistics, evaluation, and dissemination—are carried out in ways that maximize relevance, timeliness, and usability for the education stakeholders who rely on them.” The RFI notes IES’s commitment to ensuring its work is translated to support teacher and practitioner practice, improve student achievement, and other outcomes.
The RFI notes the mission of IES and the work it carries out through its four centers.[1] Emphasizing the holistic nature of this review, the RFI notes that “IES is currently undergoing a comprehensive assessment to strengthen its structure, priorities, and operations. This effort seeks to align the priorities of IES more closely with current state and local education needs, reduce duplication of effort, and increase the speed at which evidence is produced and used.”
The RFI invites specific suggestions on how IES can:
- Improve cohesion among the four IES centers, “to ensure shared goals drive data collection, research funding, and technical assistance”
- Better meet state and local needs, including those of teachers, parents, and state education agencies
- Improve the timeliness and accessibility of statistical and research products
- Maximize the usefulness of program evaluations
- Strengthen partnerships with other federal agencies or “between state agencies to align data and reduce redundancy”
- Improve the dissemination and scaling of “evidence-based practices, including the work of the RELs, WWC, and R&D Centers” and
- Update peer review, grantmaking, and contracting to “encourage innovation while maintaining rigor.”
The RFI notes particular interest in comments on how to:
- “Prioritize and streamline federal data collections to balance burden and benefit.
- Leverage its grantmaking to advance impactful, practitioner-relevant research on pressing topics, with specific input on the identification of those topics.
- Improve the reach and utility of evidence dissemination.
- Support states and districts through more responsive technical assistance and capacity building, including building states’ capacity for using evidence and creating a culture of continuous improvement.”
Submission Details: Submissions can be made through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov. Submissions should include the Docket ID “ED-2025-IES-0844” at the top.
Due Date: This RFI will remain open until October 15, 2025.
[1] National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), National Center for Education Research (NCER), National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER)