This week, the National Academy of Education (NAEd) submitted formal responses to two U.S. Department of Education Requests for Information (RFI)—addressing the modernization of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the Department’s priority of promoting patriotic education.

Read full responses on IES modernization and ED priority of promoting patriotic education.

Response to IES Modernization

In its response to the RFI seeking input on “how IES can modernize its programs, processes, and priorities to better serve the needs of the field and American students,” the NAEd underscored that any redesign must comply with IES’s Congressional mandates. The NAEd also endorsed recommendations from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM)’s report, The Future of Education Research at IES: Advancing an Equity-Oriented Science, and offered additional recommendations to ensure that IES continues to play “a critical role in supporting the development of scientifically warranted research to inform the practice of education within schools and across community sites of practice.”

Response to ED Priority of Promoting Patriotic Education

Responding to the Department’s priority of promoting patriotic education that will guide its grantmaking, the NAEd drew upon robust research evidence from its synthesis report Educating for Civic Reasoning and Discourse and related efforts and called for a more expansive approach to “patriotic” education. In addition to suggesting changing the name of the priority to “civic education,” the Academy also provided the research support concerning the benefits of civic education. The Academy’s recommendations urge the Department to expand its priority to ensure that “education in the United States…cultivate[s] a sense of national unity while also embracing the rich cultural diversity and heterogeneity of points of view that define the American experience of democratic pluralism.”