What this program funds
The Institute of Education Sciences is the primary federal funder of education research in the United States. Its flagship competitions — the Education Research Grants program (run by NCER) and the Special Education Research Grants program (run by NCSER) — fund work from early exploration of learning processes through development of interventions to rigorous efficacy and replication studies, plus measurement work. Budgets scale with the project type: exploratory and measurement studies sit at the smaller end, while multi-site efficacy and replication trials can run to several million dollars over three to five years. IES is known for demanding methodological rigor — pre-specified designs, power analyses, and in recent competitions cost-analysis plans — and for expecting research conducted with, not merely on, education agencies and schools.
Eligibility in plain English
- Institutions apply, and the eligible-applicant list is broad: universities, non-profits, research firms, and other organizations with the capacity to conduct the work.
- Principal investigators can be at any career stage; there is no early-career restriction on the main competitions, and IES runs separate training and early-career programs besides.
- Your project must fit a specific competition, topic area, and project type defined in the year's request for applications — the structure is prescriptive, and fit is assessed before merit.
- Competition topics and requirements shift year to year (and competitions have occasionally been reduced or delayed with federal budgets), so verify the current RFA and deadlines with your research development office rather than assuming last year's structure.
What you'll need to submit
- A project narrative structured exactly as the RFA prescribes — significance, research plan, personnel, and resources — written to the requirements of your chosen project type.
- A research design appendix-level of rigor: sampling and recruitment plans, power analysis, measures, and analysis plans matched to the project type's expectations.
- Cost analysis plan where the competition requires one, plus data management and dissemination plans.
- Letters of agreement from partner schools, districts, or agencies whose cooperation the design depends on.
- The standard federal package — budgets, biosketches, current and pending support — submitted through the federal application system via your sponsored programs office.
Tips for this mechanism
- Choose the project type first, and honestly. An efficacy-scale question submitted as development work (or vice versa) fails on fit before a panel weighs its merits. The typology, not the topic, drives the requirements — map your study to it before outlining.
- Expect to resubmit, and plan the calendar for it. IES review is slow by design (awards typically start many months after submission), and a large share of funded projects are revised resubmissions that respond point-by-point to prior reviews. Build a two-cycle horizon into your planning.
- Secure real partner commitments early. Letters from districts and agencies are weighed as evidence of feasibility; recruiting partners after the science is fixed produces weak letters and weaker designs. Co-develop the study with the settings it needs.
- Talk to the program officer about fit. IES program officers will discuss whether your question matches a topic and project type in the current competition — a short conversation that regularly saves an entire wasted cycle.
Related programs
- NSF education directorate programs (e.g., DRK-12 and core education research)
- Spencer Foundation research grants (field-initiated education research)
- NICHD programs on learning and child development
- IES training grants and early-career development programs