4000-01-U
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
[Docket ID ED-2022-IES-1]
Request for Information on Effective Interventions to
Improve Middle School Science Achievement and Mathematics
Achievement in Grades 3 Through 5 for Students with
Disabilities
AGENCY:

Institute of Education Sciences, Department of

Education.
ACTION:

Request for information.

SUMMARY:

The National Center for Education Evaluation and

Regional Assistance (NCEE) at the U.S. Department of
Education’s (Department) Institute of Education Sciences
(IES) is charged by Congress to identify and encourage the
use of evidence-based practices in education.

Through this

request for information (RFI), NCEE seeks public input
about the characteristics of middle school science and
upper elementary mathematics interventions as well as
information on publicly available research describing their
efficacy. Feedback from developers of such interventions
would be of particular value to the Department.
DATES:

We must receive your comments by [INSERT DATE 30

DAYS AFTER DATE OF PUBLICATION IN THE FEDERAL REGISTER].
ADDRESSES:

Submit your response to this RFI through the

Federal eRulemaking Portal.

We will not accept submissions

by postal mail, commercial mail, hand delivery, fax, or

email.

To ensure that we do not receive duplicate copies,

please submit your comments only once.

In addition, please

include the Docket ID at the top of your comments.
Federal eRulemaking Portal:

Go to www.regulations.gov to

submit your comments electronically.

Information on using

Regulations.gov, including instructions for accessing
agency documents, submitting comments, and viewing the
docket, is available on the site under the “FAQ” tab.
Privacy Note:

The Department's policy for comments

received from members of the public is to make these
submissions available for public viewing in their entirety
on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov.
Therefore, commenters should be careful to include in their
comments only information that they wish to make publicly
available.

We encourage, but do not require, that each

respondent include his or her name, title, institution or
affiliation, and the name, title, mailing and email
addresses, and telephone number of a contact person for his
or her institution or affiliation, if any.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Matthew Soldner,

Commissioner, National Center for Education Evaluation and
Regional Assistance & Agency Evaluation Officer, Institute
of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, 400
Maryland Avenue, SW, room 4160, Potomac Center Plaza,
Washington, DC 20202–7240.
Email:

Telephone:

Matthew.Soldner@ed.gov.

(202) 245-8385.

If you use a telecommunications device for the deaf
(TDD) or a text telephone (TTY), call the Federal Relay
Service (FRS), toll-free, at 1-800-877-8339.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Background:
As evidenced by recent results from the National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), too many of the
Nation’s students struggle with building foundational
skills in science (see https://go.usa.gov/xehQC) and math
(see https://go.usa.gov/xehQY).

The problem is

particularly acute among student groups that education
systems have historically underserved.
In NAEP’s 2019 assessment of twelfth graders’ science
proficiency, 69 percent of Black students, 56 percent of
Hispanic students, 58 percent of Native Hawaiian/Other
Pacific Islander students, and 51 percent of American
Indian/Alaska Native students were identified as “Below
NAEP Basic.”

On the same assessment, 75 percent of twelfth

grade students with disabilities demonstrated proficiency
“Below NAEP Basic,” a rate double that of their peers not
identified with a disability.

These results signal a need

to intervene early in students’ academic careers, with the
aim of increasing the likelihood that students are
scientifically literate by the time they leave high school.
For many students, mastery of foundational math skills
is also a significant challenge.

The success of students

with disabilities is of particular concern.

In 2017, 54

percent of fourth graders with disabilities scored “Below
NAEP Basic” in math, compared to only 15 percent of
students without disabilities.

Students entering fourth

grade with poor whole number knowledge are more likely to
struggle in later grades than their peers with a better
understanding,1,2 and it is in fourth grade where curricula
increasingly focus on rational numbers and fractions.3

Not

developing proficiency in these domains has negative and
long-term implications for students.

In addition to being

critical to life skills including personal finance,
cooking, and healthcare, this knowledge is critical to
later mathematical learning, including algebra.
As part of its continuing effort to respond to
disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, IES plans to
promote the advancement and testing of programs and
products (interventions) that can improve students’
proficiency in science and mathematics.

We are

particularly interested in (1) interventions that can
improve middle grades students’ science achievement,

Barbieri, C. A., Rodrigues, J., Dyson, N., & Jordan, N. C. (2020).
Improving fraction understanding in sixth graders with mathematics
difficulties: Effects of a number line approach combined with cognitive
learning strategies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 112(3), 628.
2 Namkung, J. M., Fuchs, L. S., & Koziol, N. (2018). Does initial
learning about the meaning of fractions present similar challenges for
students with and without adequate whole-number skill? Learning and
Individual Differences, 61, 161-167. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2017.11.018
3 Siegler, R. S., Duncan, G. J., Davis-Kean, P. E., Duckworth, K.,
Claessens, A., Engel, M., Susperreguy, M. I., & Chen, M. (2012). Early
predictors of high school mathematics achievement. Psychological
Science, 23, 691-697. doi:10.1177/0956797612440101

particularly among students in the lowest quartile of
proficiency regardless of disability status; and (2)
digital interventions that can improve the math proficiency
of third to fifth grade students with or at risk of
developing disabilities, with an emphasis on the domains of
whole numbers, rational numbers, and fractions.

Through

this RFI, IES is seeking information from developers and
program providers about relevant interventions.

This

includes interventions that developers and program
providers believe are already wholly responsive to the
needs identified above as well as those that could be
responsive to these needs if modified slightly.
When responding to this RFI, developers or program
providers intending to serve students “at risk” of
developing a disability should clearly identify the
disability or disability categories that proposed
beneficiaries are at risk of developing and specific
factors that place them at heightened risk.

The

determination may include, for example, factors used for
moving children and youth to higher tiers in a Response-toIntervention model.

Factors based solely on general

population characteristics, such as labeling a student “at
risk” for disabilities because they are from low-income
families or are English language learners, are not
sufficient for this purpose.
This is a request for information only.

This RFI is

not a request for proposals (RFP) or a promise to issue an
RFP or a notice inviting applications.

This RFI does not

commit the Department to contract for any supply or service
whatsoever.

Further, we are not seeking proposals and will

not accept unsolicited proposals.

The Department will not

pay for any information or administrative costs that you
may incur in responding to this RFI.

The documents and

information submitted in response to this RFI will not be
returned.
We will review every comment, and, as described above,
electronic comments in response to this RFI will be
publicly available on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at
www.regulations.gov.

Please note that IES will not

directly respond to comments.
Solicitation of Comments:
We invite developers or program providers with
interventions relevant to improved achievement in (1)
middle school science, or (2) upper elementary math with an
emphasis on students with or at risk of developing a
disability to share the following in their comments:
(1)

The name of their intervention;

(2)

The curricular focus of their intervention (i.e.,

middle school science or upper elementary math);
(3)

A brief description of the intervention,

potentially including (a) its major components and
pedagogical features, (b) its delivery modality (e.g.,

face-to-face; via an online platform accessed through a
browser or mobile app), (c) its intended duration and
intensity (e.g., 60 minutes, three times a week, for six
weeks), and (d) the extent to which information on student
progress is available for educators and family
members/caretakers;
(4)

The extent to which the intervention, as it is

currently available, focuses on improving the proficiency
of diverse groups of students, particularly (a) lowperforming students and (b) students with or at risk of
developing a disability;
(5)

The extent to which the intervention is

accessible to students with disabilities;
(6)

If available, a link or links to publicly

available information about the outcomes associated with
the intervention’s use, including third-party evaluations;
and
(7)

If available, a link or links to web pages that

provide additional relevant detail about the intervention,
such as information about its cost or its developers.
The Institute is committed to improving the public’s
access to, and the discoverability of, research on the
efficacy of education interventions.

In service of that

goal, we invite developers who have commissioned studies of
their interventions’ efficacy and who hold copyright to
those studies, or their authorized representatives, to

consider depositing eligible content into ERIC:

the

Institute of Education Sciences’ bibliographic and fulltext database of education research (https://eric.ed.gov/).
More information about submitting content to ERIC,
including our selection policy and how to access the online
submission portal, can be found at
https://eric.ed.gov/submit/.
Accessible Format:

On request to the program contact

person listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT,
individuals with disabilities can obtain this document in
an accessible format.

The Department will provide the

requestor with an accessible format that may include Rich
Text Format (RTF) or text format (txt), a thumb drive, an
MP3 file, braille, large print, audiotape, or compact disc,
or other accessible format.
Electronic Access to This Document:

The official version

of this document is the document published in the Federal
Register.

You may access the official edition of the

Federal Register and the Code of Federal Regulations at
www.govinfo.gov.

At this site you can view this document,

as well as all other documents of this Department published
in the Federal Register, in text or Portable Document
Format (PDF).

To use PDF you must have Adobe Acrobat

Reader, which is available free at the site.
You may also access documents of the Department
published in the Federal Register by using the article

search feature at www.federalregister.gov.

Specifically,

through the advanced search feature at this site, you can
limit your search to documents published by the Department.

Mark Schneider,
Director,
Institute of Education Sciences.
[FR Doc. 2022-00627 Filed: 1/12/2022 8:45 am; Publication Date: 1/13/2022]