IES Funds Rural Education, Secondary Writing Research

The U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences is investing $25 million to create three national research centers focused on rural education and secondary writing.

Research in rural education and secondary writing is getting a grant infusion from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. On Feb. 6, IES announced $25 million in grants to the University of Missouri, Harvard University and University of California, Irvine.

The National Center for Rural School Mental Health at the University of Missouri brings together a consortium of researchers and rural school districts across Missouri, Virginia and Montana to enhance the capacity of rural schools to identify, prevent and intervene in youth mental health concerns. 

The National Center on Rural Education Research Networks at Harvard will work with 60 rural school districts, regional education agencies and state education agencies in New York and Ohio to help build the capacity of these groups to improve the education of their students through their own data. Each of these centers is supported by IES grants of nearly $10 million that will last for a five-year period.

The WRITE (Writing Research to Improve Teaching and Evaluation) Center at UC Irvine will conduct focused research on how to improve the writing skills of high school students, by identifying features of high-quality student writing and creating opportunities for professional development for teachers. The WRITE Center received a five-year, $5 million grant from IES.

"These centers will provide us with valuable research into topics that are not always given the weight they deserve," said IES director Mark Schneider. "With IES support, these centers have the potential to make a difference for students across the United States."

More information about these research and development centers can be found here.

About the Author

Sara Friedman is a reporter/producer for Campus Technology, THE Journal and STEAM Universe covering education policy and a wide range of other public-sector IT topics.

Friedman is a graduate of Ithaca College, where she studied journalism, politics and international communications.

Friedman can be contacted at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @SaraEFriedman.

Click here for previous articles by Friedman.


Featured

  • Profile silhouette of a person thoughtfully touching their chin, overlaid with transparent data visualizations and digital interface elements suggesting artificial intelligence and analytics.

    The Institutional Knowledge Shift Is Reshaping Higher Ed IT

    Higher education IT leaders are navigating a quiet but consequential transition: Experienced team members are retiring or leaving for private-sector roles, and the teams replacing them are smaller, newer, and often stretched thin. The result is a structural shift in how technology decisions are made, executed, and sustained.

  • cloud icon with internal and external connections

    New Agentic AI Tool Analyzes Oracle Fusion and Workday Releases

    AI-powered automation platform Opkey has announced Release Advisor, a new agentic AI product aimed at helping Oracle Fusion and Workday customers analyze release updates, determine impact, and generate testing plans for their environments.

  • holographic interface of a file manager, folder structure with documents and data

    Why Universities Need to Align Data Storage with Data Value

    Institutions need to move away from a reactive habit of expanding storage and towards a more deliberate data management model based on understanding and control.

  • abstract data flow

    Google Intros New Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform

    Google Cloud has announced a new platform for building and managing enterprise AI agents, as the company seeks to turn its Gemini models and Vertex AI tooling into a broader system for automating business workflows.