The Every Student Succeeds Act’s evidence standards—coupled with recent federal research grants—are intended to drive more educators and researchers to work together to explore problems in education and find solutions. There are thousands of education researchers in the United States alone, but that doesn’t seem to make it much easier for educators to find the right person to collaborate with.
That’s why the University of Virginia and the nonprofit Jefferson Education Accelerator is building a new networking database to help connect school district officials and education entrepreneurs.
The National Education Researcher Database (easily my new favorite acronym for an education organization) expects to launch later this fall with a searchable database of profiles for more than 10,000 education researchers, including areas of expertise, contact information, and tags that will allow users to “follow” researchers and get regular updates on their work.
“The $10 billion edtech market is rife with shiny products that promise to transform teaching and learning. But educators have precious little data to understand which products are most likely to work in various environments,” said Robert Pianta, dean of UVA’s Curry School of Education, in a statement. “The market is clamoring for better evidence, but the research community feels like a black box to entrepreneurs and investors. Who are the rock stars of education research? What sort of expertise can they bring to bear on the design and implementation of new products?”
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