In September 2019, led by InnovateEDU, the Blueprint for Inclusive Research and Development in Education, or BIRD-E project, was established with the support of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The project convened a group of education leaders from research, policy, practice, federal, state and local agencies to evaluate the gaps in education R&D and design a universal framework that supports the structured and consistent articulation of data needs and the compilation, collection, and evaluation of education data. The BIRD-E project aims to bridge the current divide between research and practice. By creating systems that facilitate data generation and allow the sharing of research findings, the accessibility and discoverability of research by practitioners, researchers, and policy makers for decision making is accelerated.

The BIRD-E project has been co-designed by an inclusive and diverse group of stakeholders through a Steering Committee and Working Groups for researchers, practitioners, and industry. Through an inclusive engagement of more than 70 organizations, the Steering Committee and the Working Groups have spearheaded the development of vision, mission, guiding principles, methodology, and the design of the free, open-source framework - The Blueprint.

The Blueprint is an open-source framework that aims to modernize education research through a common, research-based data language to bridge the divide between research and practice in the K-12 data ecosystem. Its goal is to facilitate engagement of all types of stakeholders in inclusive, accessible, and robust generation and use of research. The Blueprint serves as a map to modernize current K12 research, so that impactful research can not only be conducted -- but actually used. The Blueprint aims to provide a structured, universal and consistent approach to design, collection, and reporting of research to answer the most pressing question of what works, for whom, and under what conditions. The Blueprint focuses on supporting a learning system within the research and development infrastructure that evolves and considers usability in the practitioner community.

The Blueprint contains a list of critical data elements that summarize and represent key education data needs in early childhood and K-12 education. It is a translational layer to improve articulation of data needs among researchers, practitioners and solution providers. The Blueprint provides a framework to design a well formulated research hypothesis, identify and articulate data needs to effectively evaluate impact of an intervention. It allows the reporting of findings in a consistent and structured format to make it accessible and discoverable. The direct beneficiaries of the Blueprint include researchers and research practice partnerships, solution providers, federal and state evaluation agencies, as well as decision makers in the school systems.

The creation of the Blueprint was informed by an intensive landscape analysis and experts’ review to ensure that it delivers evidence driven by the needs of the practitioners and solves the problems faced by the researchers in conducting well-aligned, high-quality, cost-efficient research.

In the long-term, The Blueprint aims to impact the sector-wide ecosystem by reducing the cost to run research studies, increasing school engagement with research, enhancing the shareability of studies results, and improving user engagement in the R&D process.

The intended beneficiaries of the Blueprint include federal, state, and local research agencies, research-practice intermediaries, established data teams of schools districts, private industry, and education technology organizations.

No. It is important to recognize the relevance of the Blueprint and clearly demarcate what it is and what it is not.

1. The Blueprint is not a standard or technical specification on how to collect data but what to collect in the context of your research hypothesis.

2. The Blueprint is not a compendium of all possible elements within the domains of education but a critical and relevant list of elements specifically focused on assessing the impact of interventions on teaching and learning and student outcomes.

3. The Blueprint is not a granular compilation or representation of all heterogeneous data that exist in the school system but a translational layer between practitioners and the research community to identify and articulate the data needs at the level that is understood by researchers, practitioners, and solution providers.

The Blueprint seeks to address several challenges in the current educational research and development environment. It is increasingly evident that research into learning and development is critically needed to improve our education systems and to open up opportunities for learning. However, our R&D infrastructure in education is woefully inadequate. Not only do we underinvest in the necessary infrastructure, but education research also is not currently structured optimally to impact educators’ decisions. Educators and system leaders don’t have access to the bodies of research and findings that could support high-quality teaching and learning and scholarship is too often disconnected from practice (and policy). Equity is too often an afterthought or is measured in simplistic and reductive ways, which prevents effective implementation.

The current system of research does not consistently put the needs of students and communities at the center of research and lacks applied evidence that can solve the problems of practice and policy due to pale federal funding compared to other sectors. Researchers focused on learning and development face significant challenges when it comes to designing research studies in a timely manner, connecting with practitioners and communities to understand needs, and lack mechanisms to collect data to understand how certain interventions or practices impact teaching and learning. There is discernible tension between equity, innovation, and quality applied research.

Current education research lacks a common, shared, research-based language or vocabulary to inform the conduct of research that is consistent, structured, and relevant. Our goal is for research to inform more equitable teaching and learning in education systems, and we must both invest in and reimagine R&D infrastructure in education. There is a need for new systems that help us answer the questions about what works for whom, how, and under what conditions. It is time to think about new ways to bridge the gap between research and practice. We need to create systems that facilitate data generation, the sharing of research findings, and research syntheses, as well as allow for better accessibility and discoverability of research by practitioners for decision making.

We need a Blueprint.

The long term improvements that we expect in the ecosystem are threefold:

1. More equitable participation in R&D: Improving overall user engagement including school systems in the R&D process.

2. Efficiency and cost reduction: Increased efficiency and cost reduction to run research studies as well as improve effectiveness and efficiency.

3. Scalability: Widespread scalability and increased commercial and non-commercial adaptations for R&D purposes.

The short term improvements:

1. Research communities can use The Blueprint to inform the design of their research agenda and articulate their needs effectively to districts and solution providers.

2. Practitioners can use The Blueprint to engage in research and evaluation efforts to answer what works for whom and how under what conditions for their student population.

3. Solution providers can align their data models and systems to The Blueprint to create/ improve interoperable systems and provide better services to district partners. They can facilitate evaluation studies for their district by aligning them to their research and data needs.

Currently, the project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

A community of researchers, technologists, practitioners, and experts from the public and private sectors. Through an inclusive engagement of more than 70 organizations, InnovateEDU led a multi-stakeholder engagement process to convene experts from the field of research, practice, policy, and industry to develop the Blueprint under the BIRD-E project. The Steering Committee and the Working Groups have spearheaded the development of the vision and mission, guiding principles, methodology, and the design of the free, open-source framework - The Blueprint.

The Blueprint was designed through a combination of stakeholder engagement and a rigorous methodology developed and vetted by experts. The guiding principles developed by the Steering Committee and Working Groups led to the creation of a methodology that included high quality extensive landscape analysis to understand existing research, standards, and publicly available databases. The major standards bodies were all involved in the drafting and feedback cycle for The Blueprint.

The design methodology involved understanding application and impact, as well as building a credible evidence-based foundation for creation of the Blueprint. This process underwent rigorous due diligence and pressure testing through user-informed pilots to understand applicability and generalizability of the Blueprint across multiple stakeholder groups. The design methodology and stakeholder review culminated in the creation of the Core and Advanced Blueprint, which is comprised of critical data elements for intervention-based research and evaluation.

The Core Blueprint is a critical set of elements that facilitate the structured compilation of data in tools and studies for efficient research evaluation that helps constituents understand the impact of intervention in improving student outcomes. The Advanced Blueprint contains elements that provide the opportunity for stakeholders to conduct more nuanced research and evaluation, including subject-specific research in emerging fields, depending on the complexity of their research needs. The Advanced version of the Blueprint is an extension of the Core with elements that are more conceptual in nature and either need complex measurement tools or are not currently collected at a wide scale but are important to advance K-12 education research, equity, and understanding of the practice.

Education research is evolving and being conducted at a pace like never before, however, practitioners are still often unable to access and use the evidence produced by our research community. This is primarily due to the way evidence is being disseminated - there is inconsistency in format, the level of details, types of information being shared about the sample and the population, and many other details. This inhibits the users from making connections between research studies and their own unique context often limiting the ability to use evidence to inform practices for their own student population. By using the Blueprint, stakeholders can consistently collect, compile, analyze and share research findings in a universal and accessible manner. Additionally, this will support meta-tagging of the research produced to facilitate discoverability across repositories, publications, and online platforms.

The Core and Advanced Blueprint comprises 5 modules: Population, Family & Community, Identification, Intervention, and Outcomes. The modules are further divided into sub-modules that are similar and the main distinctions lie at the element level. The element level is the most granular level of the Blueprint. A structured and consistent definition for all elements in both blueprints allows for consistent measurement across different types of evaluation and research intervention designs. The majority of the sub-modules and elements are student-centered and can be aggregated up at the class, school, or district level. There is a substantial focus on the Population and Intervention modules. This is to emphasize the critical information needed to answer questions about what works for whom and how, and to help other decision-makers identify interventions that would work best for their students based on the population characteristics and intervention details in the research studies that they review.

All elements in the Blueprint meet one or more of the three inclusion criteria:

1) It is relevant for advancing and modernizing education research and there is wide agreement on the meaning of the element

2) It is currently being collected with high fidelity and at wide scale

3) It is collected currently and relevant enough to be researched to a greater extent.

The elements that meet all three criteria are in the Core Blueprint.

The BIRD-E project is working on establishing a governance and usage board that will monitor and supervise the process and protocols for adding additional core elements in the Blueprint. Most elements that will be placed in the Core Blueprint will undergo research/evidence and stakeholder review before their placement in the Core.

The Blueprint is a framework, not a data collection tool or technology, and therefore doesn’t collect any student, parent, or staff personally identifiable information. The Blueprint acts as a foundational framework that can be used by researchers, practitioners, and solution providers to conduct a well-formulated research evaluation through consistent data articulation and identification of the elements needed for evaluation. It provides a format to report back research findings to ensure accessibility and discoverability.

When used the Blueprint enhances privacy and security protections through the accurate articulation of data elements and the ability to practice data minimization in the collection. Given that the elements for collection are clearly articulated it assists districts, researchers, and industry in understanding and enumerating data sharing policies, and privacy protection policies and creates safeguards for action.

The Blueprint is not a physical or cloud-based infrastructure that collects or houses student data. Rather, it outlines what data should be collected and the associated articulation between researchers, practitioners, and solution providers to enable improved compilation, collection, and analysi

Right now. You can begin to interact and even download the Blueprint to understand the data model and elements in the framework. The Blueprint can be used in multiple ways by the stakeholders in conducting research. Please read our pilot partner's case studies to further understand the use cases.

Please read our research case study with Mathematica to know more about Blueprint usage.

Please read our education solution providers' case studies with LearnPlatform and Infinite Campus to know more about Blueprint usage.

Please visit our interactive platform to access the Blueprint in different formats such as PDF, Excel, and PPT as well as use the platform to search and review the documentation on modules, submodules, and elements under the Core and Advanced Blueprint. As the Blueprint is an evolving document based on the evolution of education research and the needs of the practitioners, further updates will be made to the Blueprint.