DRDC & IERI

The Data Research and Development Center is one of over 70 projects supported by the Interagency Education Research Initiative in its mission to bring demonstrably effective interventions to scale in order to enhance student learning, and to more fully understand the nature of the scaling-up process.

The Interagency Education Research Initiative (IERI) is a federal partnership that includes the Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Ultimately, the goal of IERI is to

". . . support scientific research that investigates the effectiveness of educational interventions in reading, mathematics, and the sciences as they are implemented in varied school settings with diverse student populations. From an empirical perspective, the aim of IERI is to identify conditions under which effective evidence-based interventions to improve pre K-12 student learning and achievement succeed when applied on a large scale. Research of this kind requires investigators to integrate an understanding of the predictors of learning outcomes related to specific educational interventions with a rigorous analysis of the logistical, organizational, political, and economic factors that facilitate or impede the implementation of the interventions in varied school settings. Research on scaling up also requires that collaborative arrangements with significant numbers of schools, school districts, and/or states support the intent to executive and study the wide-scale implementation of a given intervention.”

Source: http://www.ed.gov/programs/edresearch/ieri_rfa.pdf