Today, I submitted written testimony to the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.
Chairman Aderholt, Ranking Member DeLauro, and members of the Subcommittee:
My name is Dan Lips. I am a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, a think tank focused on promoting innovation, strengthening governance, and advancing national security. I write to urge the Subcommittee to include report language directing the Department of Education (ED), the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), and/or the Department of Labor to increase the return on investment from American taxpayers’ investment in education research and development to benefit American students.
As you know, the United States faces major challenges in elementary and secondary education. Recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results revealed historically poor test scores among the nation's students, particularly disadvantaged children.
One of the causes of the widespread poor performance in the nation’s K-12 public schools has been many public school districts' decision to ignore evidence-based best practices identified through rigorous, federally supported research, including the “science of reading.” As the House Appropriations Committee recently heard in compelling testimony from Dr. Holly B. Lane from the University of Florida, there are many reasons why the nation’s public schools have not effectively aligned classroom instruction with the science of reading. Dr. Lane testified about the UFLI Foundations instructional program, which “has been adopted in more than 600,000 classrooms in at least 110 countries” and which has proven effective where it has been implemented. Lane stressed that her team “relied on the science of reading, and it worked,” noting that “most of the research was funded” by the federal government.
The “science of reading” movement, which has spurred academic gains in several states led by Mississippi, and the UFLI Foundations program specifically highlight the opportunity for federally funded education research to meaningfully improve learning opportunities for American students. Unfortunately, it is well known that the federally funded education research is too often ignored. The recent ED report on the future of the Institute of Education Sciences highlighted several major problems, including “research that is not always useful to policymakers and practitioners”; a limited focus on “actionable insights that can directly support state and local education needs”; “uneven dissemination and communication”; and “an outdated research infrastructure and organization that limits quick insights, coordination across data sets, and innovative, non-traditional research models.”
To address these and other issues and to improve learning opportunities for American students, I recommend the following:
- The Committee should direct the Institute of Education Sciences (or the appropriate federal entity) to establish an AI-powered K-12 Education Research Evidence Best Practices hub.
To ensure that research is useful to policymakers and practitioners and to provide actionable insights that can support the educational needs of students, the Committee could require IES or the appropriate federal entity to establish an AI-powered K-12 Education Research Evidence Best Practices hub. Using AI to analyze, and provide recommendations on, best practices to parents, teachers, school leaders, and policymakers has the potential to dramatically increase the return on investment from federally funded research. I respectfully suggest the following report language:
The Committee directs the Institute of Education Sciences, not later than 180 days after enactment of this Act, to develop and deploy a publicly accessible artificial intelligence-powered K-12 Education Research Evidence Best Practices Hub to synthesize findings from education research and translate them into actionable guidance for teachers, school and district leaders, parents, and policymakers. The hub shall use large language model technology to allow users to query the accumulated body of federally funded research in plain language, receive evidence-based recommendations tailored to specific instructional challenges and educational contexts, and access summaries that link findings to practical classroom and school-level applications.
- The Committee should direct ED to Leveraging the Education Innovation and Research to Develop Open Education Technology to Improve Learning Opportunities.
Congress should require ED to pursue new strategies for leveraging the Education Innovation and Research (EIR) program to benefit more American students. Since 2017, the Department has spent $1.5 billion on grants through this program; however, whether and how these expenditures have benefitted students remains unclear. A 2024 evaluation of the Investing in Innovation (i3) program, which was the precursor to EIR, found that “few of the strategies that grantees implemented and subsequently evaluated improved student outcomes in grantee sites,” and that “only 26 percent of the i3 evaluations found at least one statistically significant positive effect and no negative effects on students.”
Congress could direct ED to use EIR grant funding to direct the development of open education technology tools, similar to the successful model of the Open Technology Fund supported by the U.S. Department of State. ED could effectively transform EIR into an “Open Education Technology Fund” to support the development of open-source education tools that would expand learning opportunities for American children. Funded tools could include technologies, curricula, and services that could be made broadly available to students, parents, teachers, and school leaders to improve learning options. Such an approach could include a mandate to allow researchers to evaluate funded programs’ impact and encourage a focus on scaling evidence-based best practices. Rather than reaching small populations of children, as the current EIR program does, one can imagine an Open Education Technology Fund developing learning tools that will have a widespread impact.
To that end, I respectfully suggest the following report language:
The Committee directs the Department of Education (or the appropriate federal entity) to prioritize, within funds made available for the Education Innovation and Research program, grants to nonprofit organizations that support the development of open-source, freely available education technology tools and platforms for use in K-12 education informed by evidence-based best practices. In making such awards, the Department shall give priority to tools and technologies that support parental choice, improve classroom instruction across public and private K-12 settings, advance personalized learning and tutoring, and help students recover from pandemic-related learning loss. The Committee encourages the Department to examine the Open Technology Fund model.
- The Committee should direct ED or the appropriate federal entity to leverage technology to create a national dashboard showing per-pupil expenditures and academic achievement data required under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) for all public schools in the United States.
ESSA requires states to publish the “per-pupil expenditures of Federal, State, and local funds, including actual personnel expenditures and actual non personnel expenditures of Federal, State, and local funds, disaggregated by source of funds, for each local educational agency and each school in the State for the preceding fiscal year.” ESSA also directs states to publish information about students’ academic achievement and the state’s testing and accountability systems. However, states generally have not submitted or published this information in a manner that is accessible to American parents.
I respectfully recommend that the Committee direct Congress to include the following report language to increase transparency about public school expenditures and academic achievement:
The Committee directs the National Center for Education Statistics to develop and maintain a publicly accessible, searchable, national dashboard that displays, for each local education agency and individual public school, per-pupil expenditure data alongside student academic performance data and other indicators required to be reported under the Every Student Succeeds Act. This dashboard should be intended to provide parents and the public to easily obtain information about public school expenditures and academic achievement.
Thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony.
