[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
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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