The Hidden Harpers of American Education
- Eric Mason
- Aug 27
- 19 min read
Updated: Sep 24
Regional Educational Laboratories as the secret bards of U.S. schools
Prologue: The Song Beneath the Noise
On an ordinary day in an ordinary classroom, a quarter century ago, a teacher pinned a chart to the wall: six traits of good writing, illustrated with cheerful icons and distilled into practical steps. Students dutifully copied sentences, revised paragraphs, and—without knowing it—took part in a story that stretched far beyond their school walls. That chart, the now-famous 6+1 Writing Traits, was no accident of publishing. Its lineage winds back to a federally funded program so obscure that few outside policy circles have even heard its name. Yet in its quiet, almost invisible way, that program altered the texture of American classrooms.
I came of age as a teacher in the 1990s, just as those materials began shaping instruction. A decade earlier, in my Stranger Things years, I was immersed in another set of worlds. Only a few years after Dungeons & Dragons first appeared, I had picked up the dice and begun weaving stories at the table. The great imaginative sprawl of the Forgotten Realms—populated with cities, gods, and secret orders—felt, in its way, like a second education. Among my favorite creations was the Harpers, a network of bards and sages who worked in shadows to defend what was good. They chronicled, advised, and intervened, always in service of justice, though rarely in the spotlight.
It is perhaps no surprise that, decades later, when I found myself working at the Institute of Education Sciences on an obscure but storied program—the Regional Educational Laboratories, or RELs—I could not help but see them in Harper-like terms. Here was an order of archivists and analysts, bards of data and sages of pedagogy, sending insights quietly into every state and territory. Each day, they planned interventions, funded studies, and released reports that—though invisible to the public—guided tens of thousands of teachers and shaped the education of millions of students.
Then came the silence. The abrupt cancellation of the REL program in 2025 cast hundreds of devoted professionals into the wilderness of administrative leave. I was among them. In the long months that followed, I began to reflect on what had been lost, and to wonder whether anyone outside our circle truly knew the history. I thought of the colleagues who had devoted not two years, as I had, but entire careers—scientists, statisticians, educators whose work transformed practice in ways most never saw. Surely their service deserved to be remembered. Surely the song deserved to be heard.
For beneath the bureaucratic noise of the Department of Education, there is indeed a song. It is quieter now, muted by political choices, but it has not disappeared. It lingers in classrooms, in toolkits and curricula, in the practices of teachers who may never know its source. This, then, is my attempt to retell the story: a short history of the Regional Educational Laboratories. For nearly sixty-five years, the RELs functioned as the Harpers of American education—a network of bards, archivists, and messengers who chronicled what worked, carried insights across kingdoms, and whispered songs of data into the ears of rulers. Their influence was everywhere and nowhere, their name almost never spoken beyond research circles. And yet without them, the story of American schools in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries cannot be fully told.
Act I: The Founding Ballad (1965–1970s)
In the mid-1960s, the nation’s leadership began to speak of education with an urgency usually reserved for matters of national security. President Lyndon B. Johnson declared upon signing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 that “education is the only valid passport from poverty” and insisted that “poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.” To turn that conviction into practice, Johnson convened a presidential task force led by John W. Gardner, then president of the Carnegie Foundation. Their report, delivered in late 1964, called for a bold new system of Regional Educational Laboratories—“akin to the great national laboratories of the Atomic Energy Commission”—that would bridge the gap between research and classrooms. The RELs, Gardner argued, should act as a “staged delivery system,” interpreting, shaping, and communicating research, field-testing innovations in experimental schools, and ensuring a constant exchange between scholars and practitioners. Together, Johnson and Gardner framed educational research as a vital public good: not a marginal academic pursuit, but a national infrastructure for equity, innovation, and social progress.
In their earliest years, the laboratories tested new approaches: teacher minicourses, experimental curricula in reading and math, and studies of how poverty shaped learning. They were meant to be nimble, responsive to schools’ needs, and closely connected to the challenges of their regions. Even in this first decade, a consistent theme emerged—ensuring that all students, regardless of background or circumstance, had access to a high-quality public education. Here are just a few examples of that pioneering work.
Southeastern Education Laboratory (Atlanta, GA) – This REL focused on improving schooling for disadvantaged African American and low-income students in the Deep South. By the late 1960s it was working with a network of 24 demonstration schools to pilot new instructional methods for “deprived” children. The key goal was improving cross-cultural communication skills in newly desegregated classrooms. Researchers videotaped classroom sessions in a dozen schools to pinpoint linguistic, emotional, and cultural barriers between teachers and students, then developed training and curriculum adjustments to overcome those barriers. The lab also operated a Bilingual Materials Center in Miami to support the children of migrant farmworkers (many from Cuban or Latinx families), reflecting the broader civil-rights push to serve non-English-speaking students. These efforts directly supported southern districts’ desegregation plans under the Civil Rights Act by tackling interracial misunderstandings and helping teachers better reach historically underserved students.
Rocky Mountain Regional Educational Laboratory (Denver, CO) – This lab’s projects anticipated the coming revolution in special education spurred by the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975. In its first years, the Rocky Mountain REL conducted a large study of primary-grade teaching, then pivoted to develop interventions for students with learning difficulties. By 1969 it was concentrating on adapting curriculum materials to the needs of children “handicapped by individual learning disabilities.” This was a progressive concept at the time – recognizing learning disabilities as a category of special need – and the lab worked on instructional strategies to help these students succeed in regular classrooms. The Rocky Mountain Lab also explored vocational education programming for youth with special needs, reflecting a holistic approach to equity in schooling. Although much of this work was preliminary, it directly fed into the knowledge base used by lawmakers and educators when Public Law 94-142 (the 1975 handicapped children’s act) rolled out. In short, the Rocky Mountain REL’s early emphasis on learning disabilities and individualized instruction made it an important forerunner in the special education movement, demonstrating the REL network’s role in shaping policy for students with disabilities.
Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (Portland, OR) – NWREL (now known as Education Northwest) was an early leader in programs for Native American, multilingual, and other marginalized learners. After the Indian Education Act of 1972, NWREL launched the Indian Reading and Language Development Series, a community-based reading program created in partnership with local tribal elders and artists to reflect Native American students’ cultural heritage. This project produced culturally relevant reading materials for Native children and became a nationally circulated model for Indian education.
Act II: Discordant Chords (1970s–1980s)
But as in all tales, not every song was welcomed. By the late 1970s, the RELs were facing pointed criticism. Central Midwestern Regional Educational Laboratory (CEMREL), based in St. Louis, drew national headlines for its ambitious but polarizing experiments. Its “Man: A Course of Study” (MACOS) curriculum—an anthropological exploration of human culture for middle schoolers—was denounced in Congress for its frank treatment of death, cultural relativism, and Inuit practices. What began as an innovative social studies program turned into a lightning rod, symbolizing to critics the dangers of federal overreach and “radical” content in classrooms. By the end of the decade, CEMREL itself was shuttered, a casualty of political backlash and questions about stewardship of federal funds.
At the same time, the broader research infrastructure was being reshaped. In 1972, Congress created the National Institute of Education (NIE), intended as a Guildhall of sorts to unify the RELs, the national R&D centers, and other federal research arms. NIE’s mandate was expansive—generate new knowledge, coordinate federal education research, and strengthen the laboratories. Yet instead of stability, it brought turbulence. Congressional oversight committees accused NIE of drifting into policy advocacy, while researchers complained of shifting priorities and unstable funding. What was supposed to be a central pillar became a political flashpoint.
For a time, the RELs seemed vulnerable. Budgets shrank under the economic pressures of the 1970s. Some of their more experimental projects were dismissed as irrelevant or too radical. Congressional investigations questioned whether the laboratories had strayed too far from practical classroom concerns. Yet, like any guild that survives an inquisition, the RELs adapted. They worked more quietly, focusing on less controversial areas such as basic skills, reading instruction, and teacher development. Their reports may have circulated in thinner volumes and their curricula in smaller pilots, but the work continued, and the expertise remained.
The Rise and Fall of Man: A Course of Study
In the late 1960s, the Central Midwestern Regional Educational Laboratory (CEMREL) launched an ambitious curriculum project with Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner: Man: A Course of Study (MACOS). Designed for middle school, MACOS used films, primary sources, and inquiry-based lessons to explore the question: What makes us human? Students compared the life cycles of animals with Inuit practices and Western cultural norms, wrestling with issues of survival, morality, and cultural diversity.
The curriculum’s bold approach quickly drew fire. Conservative members of Congress—particularly Representative John B. Conlan (R–AZ) and Senator John L. McClellan (D–AR)—denounced it as wasteful, subversive, and morally corrosive. Critics charged that by presenting Inuit traditions such as seal hunting or the abandonment of the elderly without explicit moral judgment, MACOS promoted “cultural relativism” and undermined American values. Evangelical groups amplified the criticism, arguing the curriculum attacked Christian morality. For detractors, MACOS epitomized the dangers of letting federally funded “social engineers” meddle in local schools.
Hearings on Capitol Hill turned MACOS into a national controversy. While many educators praised its rigor and inquiry-driven pedagogy, the political backlash proved decisive. Publishers pulled out, schools backed away, and CEMREL—already struggling with scrutiny of its spending—saw its credibility collapse. By the early 1980s, CEMREL itself was shuttered, a casualty of the storm.
Though short-lived, MACOS left an enduring mark. It foreshadowed later debates about the politics of curriculum, the limits of federal involvement in local classrooms, and the risks faced by the RELs whenever their innovations strayed too far ahead of public opinion.
By the close of the 1980s, the RELs had endured. Though diminished in number—the network contracted to ten labs—they had proven resilient. Their survival in this discordant era testified to the idea that schools still needed translators of research, however embattled those translators might be. The chords were dissonant, the audiences skeptical, but the music of applied research never stopped entirely. It only shifted into quieter modes, awaiting the moment when the nation was again ready to listen.
Seminal REL Projects of the 1980s
1. Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study (BTES) – Far West Laboratory (San Francisco, CA)
What it was: A large-scale study (late 1970s–early 80s) of teacher effectiveness that introduced the concept of “Academic Learning Time” (ALT)—the amount of engaged, successful time students spend on academic tasks.
Why it mattered: ALT became one of the most influential metrics in teacher evaluation and professional development, later incorporated into standards for effective teaching and time-on-task studies. It laid groundwork for the teaching standards movement of the late 1980s and early 90s (e.g., NBPTS).
2. National Reports on “Effective Schools” – Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL, Colorado)
What it was: McREL researchers helped synthesize and spread the work of Ronald Edmonds and others on the Effective Schools movement, identifying key correlates of school success (strong instructional leadership, high expectations, safe environment, frequent monitoring of student progress, etc.).
Why it mattered: These studies gave districts practical levers for improvement and became foundational for school accountability systems and comprehensive school reform models in the 1990s.
3. Standards and Benchmarks Work (early precursors) – McREL and others
What it was: McREL and several other labs began cataloguing state-level standards in core subjects, long before the 1990s standards boom. Their work on content analysis, taxonomies, and curricular coherence foreshadowed the national standards databases of the 1990s.
Why it mattered: By the time states were required to set standards under Goals 2000 and later NCLB, the RELs had already prototyped the methods and systems to compare and align standards.
4. Effective Reading and Early Literacy Projects – Appalachia Educational Laboratory (AEL, WV)
What it was: AEL pioneered school improvement networks in rural districts, focusing on reading achievement, teacher collaboration, and parent engagement. They tested early reading interventions and family literacy programs, often in underserved Appalachian communities.
Why it mattered: These initiatives fed into the growing recognition that literacy was the linchpin of equity, laying groundwork for state-level early literacy acts in the 1990s–2000s.
5. School Restructuring and Site-Based Management – Northwest REL (Portland, OR)
What it was: NWREL ran pilot projects in site-based management, teacher leadership, and shared decision-making during the 1980s, responding to calls for decentralization in A Nation at Risk (1983).
Why it mattered: These efforts foreshadowed school-based management and reform networks of the 1990s, as well as today’s interest in distributed leadership and professional learning communities.
Even in an era of “discordant chords,” these projects show the RELs were quietly rehearsing the next movements in U.S. education. From teacher evaluation frameworks (ALT), to standards mapping, to effective schools correlates, to restructuring experiments, they were sketching the outlines of reforms that would dominate the 1990s and 2000s.
Act III: The Standards Canticle (1990s)
The 1990s brought a new kingdom-wide movement: standards-based reform. States wanted maps to guide what students should learn. REL Central (McREL), headquartered in Colorado, answered by building a comprehensive codex of standards and benchmarks—a living tome that let policymakers and educators compare expectations across the nation.
Elsewhere, the New England Laboratory (The LAB) documented how Massachusetts schools used the new MCAS exams to adjust instruction. WestEd worked with California to design a career-technical assessment that tested not rote knowledge but real-world tasks. These were the RELs’ great epics—songs of measurement and accountability that shaped a generation of schooling.
1. The Standards Movement
McREL (Mid-continent REL, Colorado) was the central player. In the early 1990s they created a comprehensive database of state content standards and benchmarks in every subject, mapping similarities and gaps. This “standards and benchmarks project” became the nation’s most authoritative catalog and was widely cited by policymakers and publishers.
Why it mattered: when Goals 2000 (1994) and later No Child Left Behind (2001) required states to adopt academic standards, McREL’s work had already laid the intellectual and technical groundwork. Their benchmark compendium was used by dozens of states to align curricula.
2. Accountability & Assessment
WestEd (San Francisco, successor to Far West Lab) collaborated with the California Department of Education to design the Career–Technical Assessment Program (C-TAP). Initially conceived as occupational tests, it was reconceived as a standards-driven, performance-based system assessing real-world tasks.
In New England, the LAB at Brown University studied how schools were responding to the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), documenting the ways teachers were analyzing test results to adjust curriculum.
Why it mattered: these REL assessments demonstrated early models of how test data could be used not just for accountability but for instructional improvement—a key theme in the 2000s.
3. Charter Schools & School Choice
RELs didn’t create charter schools, but several played a role in evaluating early charter and choice initiatives.
REL Northeast (LAB at Brown) ran studies of school restructuring and autonomy in the early charter sector, analyzing how governance changes affected teaching and learning.
Northwest REL (Portland, OR) supported districts experimenting with school site-based management and school choice plans, providing technical assistance on equity implications.
Why it mattered: these studies supplied some of the first systematic evidence on whether autonomy and accountability could coexist—a central question in the charter school debate.
But, there is more about how the RELs moved the the story forward on charter schools. Here’s the trail:
The first real articulation of the “charter” concept came from Ray Budde, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In the late 1970s he circulated a manuscript called Education by Charter (published formally in 1988). Budde argued that schools should operate under performance contracts (“charters”) that gave educators freedom from traditional district structures in exchange for accountability for results.
The idea might have languished in academic obscurity—except that The LAB at Brown, through its dissemination series, republished and circulated Budde’s work in the late 1980s, bringing it to the attention of policymakers and reform networks. Around the same time, Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, gave his famous 1988 speech at the National Press Club endorsing a version of the charter concept.
The REL’s involvement was subtle but catalytic: by repackaging Budde’s manuscript and pushing it through its distribution channels, it helped move “charter schools” from the realm of a provocative idea into a live reform option.
So yes—(love them or live in a permanent state of suspicion about them) a REL helped rescue the charter concept from obscurity and feed it into the bloodstream of 1990s reform. It’s another example of how the RELs often weren’t the necessarily inventors of new ideas, but the amplifiers and translators, making sure ideas reached the practitioners and policymakers who could act on them. Like the Harpers, the RELs whispered in the ears of leaders reminding them of ideas that could transform education.
4. Literacy & the Learning Sciences
Northwest REL was again pivotal, continuing its work on literacy research, teacher training, and dissemination of writing models. Out of this emerged the 6+1 Writing Traits model, developed by Vicki Spandel and Ruth Culham and tested with teachers across the Pacific Northwest. By the mid-1990s, it had spread nationally.
REL projects also supported early work on reading interventions aligned with cognitive science—prefiguring the “science of reading” movement that accelerated in the 2000s.
Why it mattered: the 6+1 model and related literacy research reshaped writing instruction for a generation, while helping bridge the gap between cognitive psychology and classroom practice.
Act IV: Advisors to the Kings (2000–2008)
When President George W. Bush made “Read by 2000” and later Reading First the centerpiece of his education agenda, the demand for hard evidence in early literacy moved from academic journals to the front lines of policymaking. Suddenly governors, state chiefs, and legislatures wanted to know which programs truly worked, which assessments to trust, and what “scientifically based reading research” actually meant. At the very moment evidence became the coin of the realm, the Regional Educational Laboratories stepped into their quiet but crucial role: advisors to the kings.
The RELs did not write national policy. Instead, they made policy usable. REL Southeast organized research alliances on early literacy, helping state departments translate the findings of the National Reading Panel into classroom guidance. REL Northwest studied the emerging role of literacy coaches in Reading First schools, producing one of the first taxonomies of coaching models that states then used to shape their training. REL Central synthesized strategy instruction research for struggling adolescent readers, offering a menu of interventions for states wrestling with secondary literacy gaps. REL Appalachia analyzed West Virginia’s early-childhood reforms as the state expanded universal pre-K, providing decision-makers with crucial baseline data.
Behind these efforts were people who would become some of the most recognizable names in evidence-based education reform. Timothy Shanahan, chair of the 2008 National Early Literacy Panel (NELP), consulted with REL Midwest and REL West on adolescent and K–3 literacy partnerships. Christopher Lonigan, also on NELP, worked with REL Southeast on state-level Response to Intervention (RTI) initiatives. Laura Justice and Christopher Schatschneider, whose intervention trials were widely cited, had their work disseminated through REL Appalachia and REL Southwest. Each of these scholars was a leader in the “science of reading” conversation—and each had a REL connection, serving as the bridge between cutting-edge research and state-level decision-making.
The National Early Literacy Panel itself provides a perfect illustration. Convened in 2008, the panel’s sweeping meta-analysis of early literacy studies identified the skills most predictive of later reading success: alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid naming, letter writing, phonological memory, concepts of print, oral language, and visual processing. It was a canonical work, shaping preschool and early-grade policy across the country. Yet it was the RELs that carried this science into practice: hosting webinars with panelists, drafting practitioner briefs, and coaching state officials on aligning their pre-K standards and K–3 interventions to the evidence.
From 2000 to 2008, critics sometimes dismissed the RELs as marginal or ineffectual. Yet in the most high-stakes reform of the era—early literacy—they were everywhere. Not as headline-makers, but as embedded experts: briefing state chiefs, training teachers, and translating research into guidance usable at scale. The RELs were not the generals of the literacy wars; they were the advisors whose counsel shaped decisions behind the throne.
In 2002, the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) program was placed under the newly created Institute of Education Sciences (IES), alongside the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Center for Education Research, and the National Center for Special Education Research. Under IES leadership, the RELs were expected to employ more rigorous scientific methods, including randomized controlled trials and advanced quasi-experimental designs, with an emphasis on improving causal evidence in education.
During the 2010s, the RELs increasingly organized their work around research–practice partnerships. Each laboratory engaged with state education agencies, school districts, and local stakeholder groups to identify high-priority issues and co-develop studies, tools, and technical assistance. This marked a shift from earlier decades, when the RELs often operated more independently of practitioners. The partnership model emphasized capacity building in the use of data and research evidence by educators and policymakers.
The RELs’ work during this period addressed a wide range of educational topics. Common areas of focus included early literacy, high school graduation and dropout prevention, college readiness, social-emotional learning, and culturally responsive pedagogy. After the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, the RELs supported states in designing and implementing accountability systems and in using evidence-based interventions.
Act V: Shifting Priorities (2011–2019)
The years between 2011 and 2019 marked a period of transition for the REL system. Following the Great Recession, states demanded more cost‑effective strategies, rigorous accountability, and evidence that could guide both policy and practice. Under IES contracts, RELs moved decisively toward research–practice partnerships (RPPs)—formal collaborations with state agencies, districts, and regional consortia. This era emphasized co‑development of research questions, quick‑turnaround studies, and practitioner‑friendly reporting formats.
Key Themes and Projects:
Early Warning and Dropout Prevention: REL Midwest and REL Northwest both piloted early warning indicator systems. By mining longitudinal student data, they helped districts identify at‑risk students as early as 6th grade. Reports detailed how metrics like attendance, suspensions, and course failures could predict high school dropout, influencing national adoption of early warning dashboards.
Educator Effectiveness: REL Southeast and REL Southwest conducted quasi‑experimental studies on teacher evaluation and professional development systems. Their work informed states revising teacher evaluation frameworks in response to Race to the Top and ESSA.
College and Career Readiness: REL Appalachia and REL Central collaborated with rural districts to track postsecondary enrollment and persistence. They produced accessible reports on dual enrollment programs, early college high schools, and workforce credential pathways. These studies directly informed state board decisions in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Colorado.
English Learner (EL) Success: REL West and REL Northwest released a series of briefs on instructional practices for English Learners. They synthesized findings into toolkits for principals and teachers, integrating strategies such as sheltered instruction, formative assessment, and family engagement.
School Climate and SEL: REL Northeast & Islands conducted large‑scale surveys of school climate in Puerto Rico and New England states. These projects introduced culturally responsive survey instruments and produced data that informed SEL programming and restorative practices.
Math and Literacy Interventions: REL Southwest carried out RCTs on middle school math curricula, while REL Southeast tested literacy interventions in early grades. Their mixed‑methods reports became part of the What Works Clearinghouse evidence base.
During this period, REL publications were intentionally shorter and more practitioner‑oriented. The goal was not only rigor, but also accessibility—infographics, webinars, and practitioner guides that could circulate in classrooms and boardrooms alike. By 2019, the RELs had become known less as producers of sprawling, multi‑year reports and more as agile partners bridging the gap between data science and day‑to‑day decision making.
Act V: The Last Songs (2020–2025)
From 2020 to 2025, REL projects continued to expand in scope, reflecting both longstanding and emerging concerns in U.S. education. Studies examined the return on investment of early college high schools, explored teacher apprenticeship pathways, evaluated the effectiveness of tutoring and acceleration strategies, and assessed approaches to reducing racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps. RELs also emphasized building state and district capacity to conduct their own analyses and apply findings to policy decisions.
In February 2025, the U.S. Department of Education canceled all active REL contracts, placing staff on administrative leave and suspending new projects. The action generated widespread concern in the education research and policy community, given the REL program’s six-decade history as one of the nation’s longest-running applied research infrastructures. Subsequent federal court rulings later in 2025 raised the possibility of reinstating the program, though its long-term future remained uncertain.
In the 2020s, the RELs turned their attention to pressing modern quests: the ROI of early college, the promise of teacher apprenticeships, culturally responsive literacy, data-driven district improvement. Their projects were small in budget but large in ambition—designed to answer not theoretical questions but the ones that kept superintendents and principals awake at night.
Then, without warning, February 2025 brought silence. All contracts were canceled, staff placed on leave, offices shuttered. Like Harpers outlawed by a suspicious king, the RELs were suddenly voiceless. Decades of archives remained, but the living bards were gone.
Epilogue: Will the Harpers Sing Again?
In a classroom somewhere today, a teacher downloads a toolkit on early literacy, not realizing it came from a REL. A district leader cites research on tutoring, unaware of its origins. The songs persist, even if their singers have been dismissed.
The RELs’ obscurity was their greatest weakness and their greatest strength. They never claimed the spotlight, so when the axe fell, few rushed to their defense. Yet their work proves a truth old as any bardic tale: societies need their archivists and singers, those who keep memory alive and whisper hard-won knowledge into the ears of leaders.
The only question now is when—and in what form—the Harpers of American education will sing again.
Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Program — Five-Year Timeline with Key Advances
1966–1970
REL program launches under ESEA, creating a national research-to-practice infrastructure.
Advances & REL contributions
Early experimental curricula (reading, math), teacher minicourses, and poverty/learning studies.
Southeastern Education Laboratory pilots cross-cultural pedagogy in desegregating schools and bilingual supports for migrant farmworker children.
Rocky Mountain REL foregrounds learning-disability-responsive instruction—work that foreshadows PL 94-142.
1971–1975
Expansion of dissemination, workshops, and policy briefs; formation of stronger university/state partnerships.
Advances & REL contributions
Indian Education Act (1972) → NWREL’s Indian Reading & Language Development Series—culturally grounded literacy for Native learners.
1976–1980
Funding volatility; continued applied research.
Advances & REL contributions
CEMREL’s Man: A Course of Study (MACOS) drives national debate on inquiry curricula and federal role in content—an influential (if controversial) instructional design episode.
1981–1985
Post–A Nation at Risk focus on rigor, dropout prevention, teacher quality.
Advances & REL contributions
Far West Lab’s Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study (BTES) popularizes Academic Learning Time (ALT)—a durable metric in teacher effectiveness.
1986–1990
Growth in tech pilots and assessment collaboration.
Advances & REL contributions
McREL synthesizes Effective Schools research (leadership, high expectations, monitoring), giving districts practical levers ahead of 1990s accountability.
Early standards taxonomy/mapping work begins (precursor to 1990s standards databases).
1991–1995
Systemic reform era (standards-based accountability, restructuring, charters).
Advances & REL contributions
McREL’s Standards & Benchmarks database becomes the go-to national catalog used by states during Goals 2000 and (later) NCLB alignment.
REL channels help move charter schools from idea to policy conversation by amplifying Budde’s manuscript through dissemination networks.
1996–2000
Internet-era dissemination expands; more NAEP/state data interpretation support.
Advances & REL contributions
6+1 Writing Traits (NWREL) scales nationally, reshaping writing instruction via teacher-tested models and training.
2001–2005
ESRA (2002) creates IES; RELs move under NCEE; 2005 recompete tightens rigor.
Advances & REL contributions
RELs pivot toward impact evaluations/RCTs while maintaining practice-oriented briefs and tools, setting the stage for What Works Clearinghouse linkages.
2006–2010
Large RCTs and high-visibility REL reports.
Advances & REL contributions
RELs translate National Reading Panel findings for states; early Reading First support (alliances, coaching models taxonomy; secondary literacy syntheses).
2011–2015
Research Alliances formalized (2012 cycle); tighter state/district partnership model.
Advances & REL contributions
Early warning/dropout prevention dashboards (REL Midwest/Northwest).
Teacher effectiveness and PD studies (REL Southeast/Southwest).
CCR/dual enrollment/early college tracking in rural contexts (REL Appalachia/Central).
EL toolkits (REL West/Northwest) and school climate/SEL surveys (REL NE&I, incl. Puerto Rico).
2016–2020
2017 cycle: deeper capacity building, ESSA evidence tiers.
Advances & REL contributions
Practitioner-first outputs (infographics, webinars, quick-turn studies); more WWC-aligned intervention evidence flowing from REL projects.
2021–2025
Planning for 2022–2027 cycle around equity, continuous improvement, integration of TA.
Advances & REL contributions (2020–2025)
Studies on early college ROI, teacher apprenticeships, tutoring/acceleration, and achievement-gap reduction; sustained capacity-building for SEAs/LEAs.
2025 disruption
All REL contracts canceled (10 labs; ~$336M), along with additional IES contracts and EAC grants; broad IES workforce cuts reported. Inside Higher Ed+1
Knowledge Use functions overseeing RELs effectively dismantled; widespread staff layoffs including CORs reported across coverage. The Washington Post
Sept 25, 2025: ED posts RFI: “Feedback on Redesigning IES”—seeking input on modernizing programs, strengthening REL/WWC dissemination, and improving TA. Federal Register
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