Education Research Grantmaking Restarts After 15 Months: Five IES Competitions Close October 1, and the Topic List Just Shrank to Six

For the first time in more than fifteen months, the federal government's education research agency is running a grant competition.

On August 6, 2026, the Institute of Education Sciences published its planned fiscal year 2027 grantmaking. Five Requests for Applications went live. The Federal Register notice followed on August 10. Optional letters of intent are due September 3, 2026. Applications close October 1, 2026, at 11:59:59 p.m. Eastern.

That is a seven-week runway for a field that has spent a year and a quarter with nothing to apply to.

The announcement matters less for what is in it than for what it signals about how IES intends to spend money for the rest of the decade. The five competitions on the table are, in the agency's own framing, the familiar ones — Matthew Soldner, who leads IES in an acting capacity, wrote that applicants reviewing these RFAs "are likely to find them familiar." The unfamiliar part arrives in December, and the strategy you build now should account for it.

What is actually open, and for how much

Five competitions, split across the National Center for Education Research (NCER) and the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER):

Research Training Programs in the Education Sciences (84.305B) and Research Training Programs in Special Education (84.324B). Two sub-programs inside each:

• Early Career Development and Mentoring — $500,000 maximum, up to four years. Eligibility is unusually specific: the doctorate must have been completed between April 1, 2019 and the award start date; the applicant must hold a faculty or research scientist position; the applicant must not have previously served as PI or co-PI on an IES award; and the applicant must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. That first constraint is a rolling window, and it is the one that quietly disqualifies people who assume they still fit.
• Methods Training — $800,000 maximum, up to three years, for institutions in the territorial U.S. with demonstrated capacity to run training.

Statistical and Research Methodology in Education (84.305D). Two award types:

• Core Grants — $900,000 maximum, up to three years.
• Toolkits — $350,000 maximum, up to two years.

The Toolkit line is the underrated one. It is a small, short, deliverable-shaped award for building something the field can use — a package, a procedure, documentation — rather than producing a finding. Methodologists who have been waiting for a full-scale research competition should look at whether the thing they actually want to build fits in $350,000 over two years, because that money is available in October and the field-initiated money is not.

Using Longitudinal Data to Support State Education Policymaking (84.305S) and the parallel special education competition (84.324S). $1.2 million maximum, up to three years. These require a state education agency as the applicant or as a co-PI. The special education version is scoped to "learners with or at risk for disabilities."

The state-partnership requirement is the structural constraint that determines whether you can compete at all. A university research center cannot assemble an SEA partnership between now and October 1 if the relationship does not already exist. Groups that have run state longitudinal data system work before are effectively the eligible pool; everyone else should read this as a signal to build the relationship for FY28.

The two waves you are actually waiting for

IES laid out three tranches. Only the first is live.

Second tranche — late September or early October 2026: From Seedlings to Scale (NCER, 84.305J) and Transformational Research in Special Education (NCSER, 84.324T).

Third tranche — December 2026: the agency's core field-initiated programs. Education Research Grants (84.305A) and its special education counterpart (84.324A). Education Research and Development Centers (84.305C, 84.324C). Research Networks Focused on Critical Problems (84.305N, 84.324N).

For most education researchers, 84.305A is IES. It is the general-purpose, investigator-initiated competition that has funded the bulk of the field's project work for two decades. It does not open until December.

That sequencing has a practical consequence worth stating plainly: if your project is a field-initiated study, do not force it into an October competition it does not fit. A methodology core grant is not a place to park an efficacy trial. Groups that submit a mis-scoped application in October will spend September writing the wrong proposal and then have to write the right one in December anyway.

The topic list is now six items, and it holds through FY2029

This is the change with the longest half-life.

IES has narrowed its research priorities. For general education, two topics: literacy and STEM. For special education, four: strengthening systems for evidence-based practice, the special education workforce, transitions from secondary education to the workforce, and low-incidence disabilities.

These are described as tentatively planned to carry across FY27, FY28, and FY29 competitions.

Six topics for three years is a dramatically smaller aperture than the topic structure IES has historically used, which ran to a dozen or more categories covering everything from early learning to postsecondary access to education leadership. Researchers whose programs sit outside literacy, STEM, and the four special education lanes are not looking at a bad year. They are looking at a three-year gap in their primary federal funder.

The second structural change: future RFAs will pose specific research questions rather than broad topics, with the stated intent of generating "a cohesive body of knowledge" across multiple grants. And grantees will be organized into hubs — networks that IES describes as taking on expanded roles as "needs-sensors and evidence-synthesizers" that feed back into the next research agenda.

Read together, those two moves describe a portfolio that is centrally directed rather than field-driven. The agency picks the questions; the hubs coordinate the answers; the synthesis informs the next round of questions. Whether that produces better evidence than bottom-up investigator initiative is a genuine methodological argument. What it does to proposal strategy is not ambiguous: the winning application increasingly needs to demonstrate fit with a stated question and a willingness to operate inside a coordinated network, not just independent scientific merit.

The money problem sitting underneath all of this

The restart is happening against an unresolved fiscal fight, and applicants should understand it because it shapes what happens after October 1.

Congress appropriated $768 million to IES for fiscal 2025. As of late June 2026, roughly $316 million of it remained unobligated, because OMB had not apportioned funds to individual IES programs. Those funds expire September 30, 2026 — unspent federal appropriations of this type do not roll over; they return to Treasury. Advocacy coalitions wrote to the Education Secretary; two of them filed suit in late June. A federal court hearing is set for September 3 — the same day IES letters of intent are due.

Soldner has said the remaining unrescinded fiscal 2025 funds "were recently apportioned" and committed to spending them in a timely manner. Plaintiffs argue the spending plan lacks the detail needed for anyone to verify that, and point to a May spending plan whose summary and detail tables contradicted each other.

Meanwhile the agency running these competitions is a fraction of its former size. IES staffing fell from 191 employees to 30 by March 2026, and more than $1 billion in IES contracts were canceled. Fiscal 2027 grantmaking is projected at roughly $250 million. The separate $790 million appropriated for fiscal 2026 does not expire until September 2027, which is the cushion that makes the three-tranche schedule possible at all.

For applicants, the operational read is this: a thirty-person agency is running five competitions in October, two more within weeks, and six more in December, while litigating its prior-year spending. Award timelines should be assumed to be slower than the historical norm, and post-submission communication should be assumed to be thin. Build your budget start dates with slack.

What to do in the next seven weeks

If you are early career and your doctorate landed on or after April 1, 2019: check the date against the award start, not against today. Confirm you have never been PI or co-PI on an IES award — including a small one you may not think of as yours. This is a $500,000, four-year award with a narrow eligible pool, and the eligibility screen does more filtering than the review panel.

If you have an existing SEA relationship: the 84.305S and 84.324S competitions at $1.2 million are the highest-dollar items open right now, and the partnership requirement thins the field considerably. File the letter of intent by September 3 even if you are undecided — it is optional but encouraged, and it costs you almost nothing.

If you are a methodologist: decide between the $900,000 core grant and the $350,000 Toolkit on the basis of what you are producing, not on the basis of which number is larger. Toolkits have a shorter period, a cleaner deliverable, and a smaller applicant pool.

If your work is field-initiated: spend September reading the six priority topics honestly against your research program, and start the December application now. The 84.305A competition will open into a field that has been waiting fifteen months for it, and the volume will be extraordinary.

Everyone: the priority list is the document to internalize, not the RFA. Five competitions closing October 1 is a news item. Six topics governing three fiscal years is the strategy.

Related reading: Executive Order 14332 Is Rewriting the Rules of Federal Grantmaking and the OMB 2 CFR Part 200 overhaul targeting October 1, both of which govern the terms these awards will carry.