Notice2023-22482
Request for Information on Potential New Program, From Seedlings to Scale (S2S)
Primary source
Metadata and text below are from the Federal Register, a public-domain U.S. government work. Always verify the official published version before relying on it for any legal matter.
Published
October 12, 2023
Issuing agencies
Education Department
Abstract
The National Center for Education Research (NCER), a center within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), is seeking insight to guide its efforts to fund quick-turnaround high-reward, scalable solutions intended to improve education outcomes for all students.
Full Text
<html>
<head>
<title>Federal Register, Volume 88 Issue 196 (Thursday, October 12, 2023)</title>
</head>
<body><pre>
[Federal Register Volume 88, Number 196 (Thursday, October 12, 2023)]
[Notices]
[Pages 70652-70654]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [<a href="http://www.gpo.gov">www.gpo.gov</a>]
[FR Doc No: 2023-22482]
=======================================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
[Docket ID ED-2023-IES-0011]
Request for Information on Potential New Program, From Seedlings
to Scale (S2S)
AGENCY: Institute of Education Sciences, Department of Education.
ACTION: Request for information.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY: The National Center for Education Research (NCER), a center
within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), is seeking insight to
guide its efforts to fund quick-turnaround high-reward, scalable
solutions intended to improve education outcomes for all students.
DATES: We must receive your comments by November 13, 2023.
ADDRESSES: Comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking
Portal at <a href="http://regulations.gov">regulations.gov</a>. However, if you require an accommodation or
cannot otherwise submit your comments via <a href="http://regulations.gov">regulations.gov</a>, please
contact the program contact person listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
CONTACT. The Department will not accept comments submitted after the
comment period. To ensure that the Department does not receive
duplicate copies, please submit your comments only once. Additionally,
please include the Docket ID at the top of your comments.
Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to <a href="http://www.regulations.gov">www.regulations.gov</a> to submit
your comments electronically. Information on using <a href="http://regulations.gov">regulations.gov</a>,
including instructions for accessing agency documents, submitting
comments, and viewing the docket, is available on the site under the
``FAQ'' tab.
Privacy Note: The Department's policy is generally to make comments
received from members of the public available for public viewing in
their entirety on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at
<a href="http://www.regulations.gov">www.regulations.gov</a>. Therefore, commenters should be careful to include
in their comments only information that they wish to make publicly
available. We encourage, but do not require, that each respondent
include their name, title, institution or affiliation, and the name,
title, mailing and email addresses, and telephone number of a contact
person for the institution or affiliation, if any.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Erin Higgins, Education Research
Analyst, National Center for Education Research, Institute of Education
Sciences, U.S Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW,
Washington, DC 20202-7240. Telephone: (202) 987-1531. You may also
email your questions to <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#debbacb7b0f0b6b7b9b9b7b0ad9ebbbaf0b9b1a8"><span class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="9bfee9f2f5b5f3f2fcfcf2f5e8dbfeffb5fcf4ed">[email protected]</span></a>, but as described above,
comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at
<a href="http://regulations.gov">regulations.gov</a>.
If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability and
wish to access telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Background
Our education system is tasked with helping Americans across their
entire lifespan to successfully engage in civic activity and
participate in an ever-evolving workforce, building the foundation for
the Nation's future.
In the Explanatory Statement accompanying the fiscal year (FY) 2023
Consolidated Appropriations Act (P.L. 117-328), Congress directed IES
to invest in quick-turnaround high-reward, scalable solutions intended
to improve education outcomes for all students.\1\ To fulfill this
directive, IES's Accelerate, Transform, and Scale (ATS) initiative will
support advanced education research and development (R&D) to create
scalable solutions to improve education outcomes for all learners and
eliminate persistent achievement and attainment gaps. Through this
initiative, IES will invest in bold, innovative ideas that come from
interdisciplinary, diverse teams that have the potential to make
dramatic advances towards solving seemingly intractable problems and
challenges in the education field.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ United States Congress. Committee Print of the Committee on
Appropriations, U.S. House of Representatives, on H.R. 2617/Public
Law 117-328. 117th Congress, Second Session. Washington: US. Govt.
Publishing Off. 2023.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ATS will pilot efforts modeled on the advanced research projects
agencies (ARPAs) found throughout the Federal government. ARPAs
leverage insights from traditional/basic research to develop and scale
breakthrough solutions and capabilities in focused areas that research
or industry do not traditionally support. Many domains of R&D are
primed for breakthrough advances that can make inroads on long standing
education goals, such as personalizing student and educator learning,
dramatically increasing learners' motivation and engagement,
transforming the implementation and usefulness of assessments, and
supporting successful transitions from school to career and between
careers.
To advance ARPA-style efforts in education, the ATS initiative will
build on several existing IES investments, including the Leveraging
Evidence to Accelerate Recovery Nationwide (LEARN) Research Network,
the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, the Standards
for Excellence in Educational Research (SEER) Research Network for
Digital Learning Platforms, prize challenges, and the Transformative
Research in the Education Sciences research program. ATS will also
support new activities that emphasize creating scalable, high impact
solutions, such as going from idea to prototype and preparing existing
tools, techniques, and products with evidence of effectiveness for
scaling.
This RFI is focused on a proposed new program within ATS we are
calling ``From Seedlings to Scale'' (S2S). IES is considering a three-
phase investment strategy for S2S to support transformative ideas as
they grow from seedlings to scalable solutions. As proposed, S2S would
focus on high quality research, robust product development, and
sustainability and scaling in the education marketplace. The
performance goals below highlight how, at a high-level, each of those
elements could be combined into a successful project.
Across the three proposed phases of funding, the Department
envisions that successful performers would:
<bullet> Develop a full product or a broadly-applicable, new
capability.
<bullet> Foster collaboration between product developers,
researchers, and
[[Page 70653]]
educators who are highly-skilled in their respective disciplines and
across disciplines.
<bullet> Challenge what is currently possible by pursuing
breakthroughs, not incremental improvements or ``point solutions.''
<bullet> Maintain an unwavering focus on improving learner
outcomes, continuous improvement, and rigorously evaluating
performance.
<bullet> Define from the beginning a credible path to significant
impact and commercial success (including free and open-source
pathways).
<bullet> Catalyze new areas of interest and investment.
Through the specific questions in the next section, IES is
soliciting public comment on the two topics described below, Focus
Areas and Program Design, to inform the development of the S2S program.
Topic One: Proposed S2S Focus Areas
IES is currently considering four focus areas:
<bullet> Developing approaches that can be used to help learners
build skills throughout their life spans to gain broadly applicable
competencies and domain-specific skills in growing areas critical for
international competitiveness in the jobs of the future.
<bullet> Creating tools and systems that can accurately identify
and determine the unique needs of individual neurodiverse learners and
propose a custom suite of instructional and technological supports to
guide their learning.
<bullet> Creating next-generation tools for educators for feedback,
recommendations, and supports that leverage artificial intelligence to
augment teaching and planning. These efforts should support educators
and coaches to reflect holistically on the elements of daily practice,
including learning environment, instructional strategies, and student
performance.
<bullet> Creating new techniques and approaches to help educators
and learners implement strategies to support behavior and emotion
regulation and to support learners' interactions with others in ways
that build and maintain caring environments, strong relationships, and
robust mental health.
We have also developed a list of potential cross-cutting areas that
would be listed alongside the focus areas as ``additional topics of
interest.'' We do not anticipate that these additional topics would
become requirements for potential performers; rather, they would be
strongly recommended as areas to consider. The additional topics of
interest include:
<bullet> Data modernization (including transferability,
interoperability, and common measures).
<bullet> Human-centered design for education innovation.
<bullet> Open, fair, and transparent research.
<bullet> Data privacy and security.
IES is not currently soliciting examples of ideas for breakthrough
solutions under these categories, but we plan to announce more efforts
in this area soon after the initial priority areas are solidified.
Topic Two: Proposed S2S Program Design
IES proposes to leverage a tiered investment model to spur R&D to
accelerate the creation of tools, techniques, and products that can
lead to breakthrough solutions for any stage of the education system:
pre-K, K-12, postsecondary (including community colleges and technical
training institutes), and adult education. We envision that this
investment model will use a three-phase process to support developing
transformative solutions. We offer a brief sketch of the proposed model
below. Advancement from one stage to the next would not be automatic
but would be contingent on performance and available funds. We
anticipate that the timeline for completing all three phases would take
an average of six years. However, it is possible that phase three
awards focused on scaling may not follow-on directly from a phase two
award if IES chooses to structure this phase similar to the Department
of Energy's ARPA (ARPA-E) SCALEUP program (<a href="https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/scaleup">https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/scaleup</a>), which was launched by ARPA-E to provide funding
for projects to continue scaling.
For the first phase of funding, teams would have approximately one
year to demonstrate that their proposed solution could meet four
essential milestones: (1) serve a set of education providers, educator,
or learner needs; (2) define and refine the key performance indicators
(KPIs) for the solution; (3) create a prototype that can demonstrate
elements of the core functionality at a ``demo day''; and (4) conduct
one or more successful studies providing evidence of the promise of the
proposed solution for improving learner outcomes relative to
traditional approaches, should the solution be fully developed.
Projects that demonstrate a compelling use case(s) and promising
prototype would be able to move to the second phase. This stage would
be approximately two years. The second phase would focus on rapid,
iterative development to turn the prototype into a functional solution,
answering key research questions about its design, establishing
product-market fit, and gathering initial evidence of promise. In this
second stage, awardees should also be looking for opportunities to
forge strong external partnerships that can function together to
improve learner outcomes.
The third phase of funding would last approximately three years.
This stage would focus on leveraging strategic partnerships to support
continuous improvement, expanding the user base, and independently and
rigorously evaluating the impacts of the solutions that showed evidence
of promise and strong product-market fit. In this stage, it would be
critical to evaluate whether this new solution improves education
outcomes and reduces persistent achievement and attainment gaps
relative to existing solutions, and to determine cost, implementation
ease, and other important measures that reflect both effectiveness and
product-market fit. It is also possible that this phase may not follow
directly from the previous two phases, allowing time to further develop
the partnerships necessary for scaling.
This is a request for information only. This RFI is not a request
for proposals (RFP), a request for applications (RFA), or a promise to
issue an RFP or a notice inviting applications (NIA). This RFI does not
commit the Department to contract for any supply or service whatsoever.
Further, we are not seeking proposals and will not accept unsolicited
proposals that align to this potential program. The Department will not
pay for any information or administrative costs that you may incur in
responding to this RFI. The documents and information submitted in
response to this RFI will not be returned.
Solicitation of Comments: To assist in refining the topic areas and
program design for the S2S program, we invite comments in response to
the questions below:
(1) Are the focus areas and cross cutting topics described well
suited to advanced development R&D?
(a) Are these areas already adequately covered by existing funding
mechanisms? If not, why not?
(b) Are there other topics that you think would yield more promise
for identifying and developing breakthrough solutions? If so, what do
you find more compelling about that topic?
[[Page 70654]]
(2) To successfully develop products and ecosystems that make a
major impact on learners' education outcomes, teams will need a variety
of supports. IES may require support from private industry in areas
such as providing consultation and coaching to teams, convening
potential partners for research and scaling.
(a) What would an ideal team look like to maximize the likelihood
of success? For example, what role would researchers, education
agencies (at the state or local level), and private companies play in
the team?
(b) How can we ensure community engagement and input?
(c) What kind of experience does your organization have with
supporting ARPA-style R&D efforts, especially those related to the
education sciences? What case studies can you share from your
experience?
(d) Particularly in the areas of fair, open, and transparent
research and data privacy and security, what kind of programing or
resources would you recommend providing teams?
(3) With a focus on developing quick-turn around, high-reward and
scalable solutions, what would you propose are the core activities and/
or benchmarks for success for a project in each of the phases? What
examples can you provide around past successes in social science
domains or specifically related to education R&D?
(4) Could you provide any estimates of the costs, assets, and
contributions required for a team to successfully complete each phase?
(5) As a part of this effort, IES may seek support in establishing
a technical working group (TWG) to inform the activities that will
guide research teams for the S2S competition. If we were to establish a
TWG related to the S2S competition, what kind of expertise would you
propose is essential to a TWG in this area? Are there specific
organizations or individuals that you suggest be included in the TWG?
Accessible Format: By request to the program contact person listed
under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT, individuals with disabilities
can obtain this document in an accessible format. The Department will
provide the requestor with an accessible format that may include Rich
Text Format (RTF) or text format (txt), a thumb drive, an MP3 file,
braille, large print, audiotape, or compact disc, or other accessible
format.
Electronic Access to This Document: The official version of this
document is the document published in the Federal Register. You may
access the official edition of the Federal Register and the Code of
Federal Regulations at <a href="http://www.govinfo.gov">www.govinfo.gov</a>. At this site you can view this
document, as well as all other documents of this Department published
in the Federal Register, in text or Portable Document Format (PDF). To
use PDF you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available free at
the site.
You may also access documents of the Department published in the
Federal Register by using the article search feature at
<a href="http://www.federalregister.gov">www.federalregister.gov</a>. Specifically, through the advanced search
feature at this site, you can limit your search to documents published
by the Department.
Mark Schneider,
Director, Institute of Education Sciences.
[FR Doc. 2023-22482 Filed 10-11-23; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4000-01-P
</pre><script data-cfasync="false" src="/cdn-cgi/scripts/5c5dd728/cloudflare-static/email-decode.min.js"></script></body>
</html>Indexed from Federal Register on October 12, 2023.
This is legal information, not legal advice. Laws vary by jurisdiction and change frequently. Always verify current law with official sources and consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction for advice on your specific situation.