Why Education Needs Both Traditional and Breakthrough R&D

Education is central to the nation’s well-being and prosperity. We rely on research and the affordances of new technology to advance other critical sectors such as health, agriculture, transportation, and defense. Education deserves the same commitment, yet education research and development (R&D) accounts for less than 2% of federal per pupil spending and lags far behind other sectors.

Because of this chronic underfunding of education R&D, the debate is too often framed as an either/or dilemma: Do we fund slow-and-steady traditional and incremental science, or do we make big bets on moonshots? Instead of making a false choice, we see the need for a range of federal investment strategies. Here we argue for a balanced education R&D ecosystem that recognizes the value of both traditional and breakthrough R&D.

The Indispensable Value—and Limits—of Traditional R&D

Traditional, field-initiated R&D plays a foundational role in driving long-term progress. The “Mississippi Miracle” would not have occurred without decades of cumulative research on the science of reading. Mathematics education research has identified distinct strategies for raising math achievement and improving math instruction. The steady accumulation of field-specific evidence to understand what works, for whom, and under what conditions is essential to improving education outcomes for all learners.

At the same time, traditional R&D alone cannot carry the full weight of transforming our education system. Translation and timeliness challenges are often identified as limitations of field-initiated R&D projects. These projects have a tendency to be slow and piecemeal, in contrast to coherent programs of research focused on high priority areas. Impacts from the education research field on practice are often constrained by risk-aversion from funders and reviewers, siloed teams, and transition challenges. Furthermore, the effects of hard-won, long-term incremental advances can be swamped by far-reaching contextual changes such as the spread of smartphones and social media, the pandemic, or the current shock from artificial intelligence.

Thus, traditional, field-initiated education R&D alone cannot deliver the future-oriented, transformative solutions required to handle technological shifts and a reimagined education experience. R&D focused on breakthrough solutions requires its own resources and management strategy.

What Coordinated Investments in Breakthrough R&D Could Accomplish

Initiatives such as the Institute of Education Sciences’ Accelerate, Transform, Scale (ATS) Initiative have begun to support an explicit subfield dedicated to developing breakthrough solutions to persistent education challenges. Through this initiative, IES is investing 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.

Advocates of this type of funding have long argued that the federal government can accelerate innovation by directing capital toward specific technological priorities and challenge areas. Researchers and practitioners have contended that the federal government can play a big role in infrastructure-building, with public investment focused on creating the conditions that allow innovation ecosystems to emerge and scale—for example, through regional innovation hubs that intentionally link local schools, academic learning scientists, and commercial startup capital.

Cultivating the Conditions for a Strong Field to Support Breakthrough R&D

To move from piecemeal investments in individual, innovative projects toward a coherent field that supports breakthrough R&D, we need to define what a strong field actually looks like and measure our progress toward it. Our new white paper, Cultivating a Strong Field: Reengineering Education R&D for Speed, Scale, and Impact, outlines five conditions necessary to sustain breakthrough education R&D:

• a shared language and identity that unites innovators around a common purpose and sense of who is in the field;
• essential practices that codify how the field does its work and builds capacity;
• a knowledge base that captures what the field knows, engages experts and practitioners in ongoing improvement, and disseminates that knowledge widely;
• leadership and ecosystem that bring together influential leaders and organizations with broad constituency engagement, oriented toward long-term mutual engagement rather than transactional relationships; and
• pathways to success that ensure sufficient funding, a supportive policy environment, and viable routes to impact at scale.

We hope that this framework provides a useful lens for identifying opportunities to strengthen these conditions and build the robust education R&D ecosystem necessary for system-level transformation.