I am reposting this article from the COS Website.

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) invites applications to develop interventions that target specific problems faced by chronically low-performing schools and test the promise of strategies for successfully addressing those problems within a relatively short time period. Over the five-year project period, grantees will be expected to develop and test a number of practices that principals of low-performing schools, with support from their district, could implement to improve their schools. Eligible applicants include, but are not limited to, nonprofit and for-profit organizations and public and private agencies and institutions, such as colleges and universities. Competitive applicants will have research teams that collectively demonstrate expertise in school improvement practices, intervention development, implementation of, and analysis of results from, the research design that will be employed, and working with teachers, schools, or other education delivery settings. Typical awards for projects are $250,000 to $650,000 per year for a maximum of five years. The letter of intent due date is August 3, 2009; the application due date is October 1, 2009.

I am extremely interested to see what sort of science comes from these studies.  Improving low performing schools is one of the best investments our government can make.