APA Services joined the Friends of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), a coalition of 40 organizations, in a joint letter urging Congress to fully fund IES in fiscal year (FY) 2026 (PDF, 93KB)opens in new window. The coalition asks Congress to specify funding amounts for individual IES programs in the final bill, and direct IES to restart peer review panels for the FY 2025 competitions for the National Center for Education Research (NCER) and the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER). The group also requests Congress to ensure there is sufficient staff and infrastructure capacity across IES programs to implement current and redesigned activities.
The coalition expressed its appreciation for language in the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that maintains the current funding level of $793.1 million for IES. It also welcomed the House bill’s commitment to providing current funding levels for many of the IES line items and the increase for Statistics. The Friends of IES supports the House and Senate practice of allocating IES programs by line item and the Senate language that would bind those line items to law.
However, the coalition voiced concern about the House’s proposal to eliminate funding for the Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs). The RELs connect research to practice by helping states and districts implement evidence-based instruction. The coalition noted the recent restoration of REL contracts and administrative and longitudinal data activities for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) after earlier cancellations and emphasized that these contractors are essential for timely data and research dissemination.
The Friends of IES stressed that robust funding and staffing are essential to IES to produce evidence that informs policy and practice, scale evidence-based programs, deliver high-quality statistics, and translate research into usable resources, including the Accelerate, Transform, and Scale initiative.
APA Services will continue to advocate to maximize the highest level of funding for IES and for preserving existing investments in the science of teaching and learning.
For more information, contact Angela L. Sharpe.