CFDA#: 84.305F
Program Type: Discretionary/Competitive Grants

The Institute intends for the research program on Field-Initiated Evaluations to establish the efficacy of existing education interventions that are used in schools and other education delivery settings. The intent of this competition is to provide federal support for evaluations of the effectiveness of education interventions that are being used in the field, that appear promising based on student performance or fill an unmet need, but that have not benefited from a rigorous evaluation of effectiveness.

Many such interventions are developed by education providers such as school districts or by small businesses or non-profit groups that are not well-equipped to plan or carry out rigorous evaluations. This research program is intended to fill a gap in federal funding between the evaluation of federal education programs on the one hand, and research and development that is carried out in the academic and university sector on the other hand.

The Institute believes that much potentially valuable innovation also occurs in the practice community. The Institute intends this research program to document the effectiveness of some of those innovations so as to promote wider and more confident adoption of successful innovations and abandonment or improvement of those that are not producing the intended results. The long-term outcome of this program will be to expand the body of scientific evidence on the effectiveness of a wide range of education interventions that intend to significantly improve student achievement.