NCADE Emerging: A Briefing and Conversation With the Institute of Education Sciences

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the independent research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, has been vaulted into the news cycle with the announcement that the Trump administration has canceled more than $800 million of its contracts. These reports and the ensuing controversy make now an appropriate time for the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading to rebroadcast NCADE Emerging: A Briefing and Conversation With the Institute of Education Sciences, an invitation-only session we hosted during GLR Week 2023. This session was held just after then-President Biden had signed into law a budget package that included an extra $40 million for IES to use for research, development, and dissemination. Then-IES Director Mark Schneider, Ph.D., had proposed using a portion of these funds to establish a National Center for Advanced Development in Education (NCADE) to support “quick-turnaround, high-reward, scalable solutions” to significantly improve student outcomes. As proposed, NCADE would follow a model like that of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to create the extra flexibility, staffing, interdisciplinary perspectives, and practice orientation needed to achieve breakthroughs in education tools and practices. 

On February 18, 2025, CGLR hosted a special rebroadcast of a NCADE Emerging, providing an opportunity for a broader audience to hear Schneider and Elizabeth Albro, Ph.D., the commissioner of education research at IES, discuss their vision for implementing a DARPA-like approach in education with commentary and reflections from philanthropic leaders who have invested in transformative research. The fact that this aspirational conversation occurred less than two years ago, encouraged CGLR to believe that a revisit could play a value-added role in illuminating and navigating the current controversy.