[Federal Register Volume 75, Number 129 (Wednesday, July 7, 2010)]
[Notices]
[Pages 39001-39003]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2010-16527]


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DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

[Docket ID ED-2010-IES-0008]


Notice Inviting Comments on Priorities To Be Proposed to the 
National Board for Education Sciences of the Institute of Education 
Sciences

AGENCY: Institute of Education Sciences, Department of Education.

ACTION: Notice inviting comments on priorities to be proposed to the 
National Board for Education Sciences of the Institute of Education 
Sciences.

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SUMMARY: The Director of the Institute of Education Sciences 
(Institute) has developed priorities to guide the work of the 
Institute. The National Board for Education Sciences (Board) must 
approve the priorities, but before proposing the priorities to the 
Board, the Director must seek public comment on the priorities. The 
public comments

[[Page 39002]]

will be provided to the Board prior to its action on the priorities.

DATES: We must receive your comments on or before September 7, 2010.

ADDRESSES: Submit your comments through the Federal eRulemaking Portal 
or via postal mail, commercial delivery, or hand delivery. We will not 
accept comments by fax or by e-mail. Please submit your comments only 
one time, in order to ensure that we do not receive duplicate copies. 
In addition, please include the Docket ID at the top of your comments.
     Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to http://www.regulations.gov to submit your comments electronically. Information 
on using Regulations.gov, including instructions for accessing agency 
documents, submitting comments, and viewing the docket, is available on 
the site under ``How To Use This Site.''
     Postal Mail, Commercial Delivery, or Hand Delivery. If you 
mail or deliver your comments about these proposed priorities, address 
your comments to Elizabeth Payer, U.S. Department of Education, 555 New 
Jersey Avenue, NW., room 602c, Washington, DC 20208.

    Privacy Note: The Department's policy for comments received from 
members of the public (including those comments submitted by mail, 
commercial delivery, or hand delivery) is to make these submissions 
available for public viewing in their entirety on the Federal 
eRulemaking Portal at http://www.regulations.gov. Therefore, 
commenters should be careful to include in their comments only 
information that they wish to make publicly available on the 
Internet.


FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Elizabeth Payer. Telephone: (202) 219-
1310.
    If you use a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD), call the 
Federal Relay Service (FRS), toll free, at 1-800-877-8339.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Invitation to Comment: We invite you to 
submit comments regarding these proposed priorities. During and after 
the comment period, you may inspect all public comments about these 
proposed priorities by accessing Regulations.gov. You may also inspect 
the comments, in person, in room 602q, 555 New Jersey Avenue, NW., 
Washington, DC, between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., Eastern 
time, Monday through Friday of each week except Federal holidays.
    Assistance to Individuals With Disabilities in Reviewing the 
Record: On request we will provide an appropriate accommodation or 
auxiliary aid to an individual with a disability who needs assistance 
to review the comments or other documents in the public rulemaking 
record for these proposed priorities. If you want to schedule an 
appointment for this type of accommodation or auxiliary aid, please 
contact the person listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT.
    Background: The Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (20 U.S.C. 
9516) requires that the Director of the Institute propose to the Board 
priorities for the Institute. The Director is to identify topics that 
require long term research and topics that are focused on understanding 
and solving education problems and issues, including those associated 
with the goals and requirements of the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Act of 1965, as amended; the Individuals with Disabilities 
Education Act, as amended; and the Higher Education Act of 1965, as 
amended; such as closing the achievement gap; ensuring that all 
children have the ability to obtain a high-quality education and reach, 
at a minimum, proficiency on State standards and assessments; and 
ensuring access to, and opportunities for, postsecondary education.
    Before submitting proposed priorities to the Board, the Director 
must make the priorities available to the public for comment for not 
less than 60 days. Each comment submitted must be provided to the 
Board.
    The Director anticipates submitting to the Board proposed 
priorities for the Institute at a meeting to be held in September, 
2010.
    The Board must approve or disapprove the priorities for the 
Institute proposed by the Director, including any necessary revision of 
the priorities. Approved priorities are to be transmitted to 
appropriate congressional committees by the Board.
    The Director will publish in the Federal Register the Institute's 
plan for addressing the priorities and make it available for comment 
for not less than 60 days.

Proposed Priorities

    The overall mission of the Institute is to expand fundamental 
knowledge and understanding of education and to provide education 
leaders and practitioners, parents and students, researchers, and the 
general public with unbiased, reliable, and useful information about 
the condition and progress of education in the United States; about 
education policies, programs, and practices; and about the 
effectiveness of Federal and other education programs.
    The work of the Institute is grounded in the principle that 
effective education research must be informed by the interests and 
needs of education practitioners and policymakers. To this end, the 
Institute will encourage close partnerships between researchers and 
practitioners in the conceptualization, planning, and conduct of 
research and evaluation. The Institute will facilitate the use of 
education statistics, research, and evaluation in educational planning 
both by including members of the practitioner community in the design 
and conduct of the work and by producing reports that are accessible, 
timely, and meaningful to the day-to-day work of education 
practitioners and policymakers. Further, the Institute will seek to 
increase the capacity of education policymakers and practitioners to 
use the knowledge generated from high quality data analysis, research, 
and evaluation.
    To accomplish this mission, the Institute will compile statistics, 
support research, conduct evaluations, and facilitate the use of 
scientific evidence addressing a broad range of education outcomes for 
all students, including those with disabilities. These education 
outcomes may include, but are not limited to: School readiness and 
developmental outcomes for infants, toddlers, and young children; 
learning, higher order thinking, and achievement in reading and 
writing, mathematics, and the sciences; behaviors, skills, and 
dispositions that support learning in school and later success in the 
workforce; educational attainment in postsecondary, vocational, and 
adult education; and the training, recruitment, and retention of 
educators.
    Within these areas, the Institute will sponsor work to: Examine the 
state of education in the United States; develop and evaluate 
innovative approaches to improving education outcomes; understand the 
characteristics of high-quality teaching and how better to train 
current and prospective teachers; understand the processes of schooling 
through which educational policies, programs, and practices affect 
students; and understand classroom, school, and other social contextual 
factors that moderate the effects of education practices and contribute 
to their successful implementation and sustainability. In doing so, the 
Institute will seek to identify education policies, programs, and 
practices that improve education outcomes; and to determine how, why, 
for whom, and under what conditions these policies, programs, and 
practices are effective. In particular, the Institute will promote 
research to improve education outcomes for those

[[Page 39003]]

students who have traditionally been poorly served by the education 
system because of their socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, 
disability, limited English proficiency, and residential or school 
mobility, with a goal of generating knowledge to assist educators and 
policymakers in assessing and improving the equity of the education 
system.
    The Institute will maintain rigorous scientific standards for the 
technical quality of its statistics, research, and evaluation 
activities, ensuring that the methods applied are appropriate to the 
questions asked and the results are valid and reliable. The work of the 
Institute will include a variety of research and statistical methods. 
The Institute will support the development of improved research 
methods; improved measures of a broad range of education processes, 
systems, and outcomes; and improved analytical approaches for designing 
and conducting education research. Where needed, the Institute will 
develop and publish rigorous technical standards for these methods. The 
Institute will ensure the quality and objectivity of its work by 
submitting all products to rigorous scientific review. In addition to 
supporting new research, the Institute will facilitate the synthesis of 
existing and ongoing research to construct coherent bodies of 
scientific knowledge about education. The Institute will build the 
capacity of the education research community by supporting post-
doctoral and interdisciplinary doctoral training in the education 
sciences, equipping education researchers with the skills to conduct 
rigorous research and effectively engage the practitioner community in 
that research, and by conducting training in research design and 
methods and in the use of longitudinal data.
    Accessible Format: Individuals with disabilities can obtain this 
document in an accessible format (e.g., braille, large print, 
audiotape, or computer diskette) on request to the contact person 
listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT.

Electronic Access to This Document

    You can view this document, as well as all other documents of this 
Department published in the Federal Register, in text or Adobe Portable 
Document Format (PDF) on the Internet at the following site: http://www.ed.gov/news/fedregister. To use PDF you must have Adobe Acrobat 
Reader, which is available free at this site.
    You may also view this document in text (Word and PDF) at the 
following site: http://ies.ed.gov/whatsnew/.

    Note: The official version of this document is the document 
published in the Federal Register. Free Internet access to the 
official edition of the Federal Register and the Code of Federal 
Regulations is available on GPO Access at: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/nara/index.html.

(Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance number does not apply.)

    Program Authority: 20 U.S.C. 9501 et seq.

    Dated: July 1, 2010.
John Q. Easton,
Director, Institute of Education Sciences.
[FR Doc. 2010-16527 Filed 7-6-10; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4000-01-P