Accelerate, Transform, Scale (ATS) Hub

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The ATS Hub supports IES’ Accelerate, Transform, Scale (ATS) Initiative through capacity building, community engagement, and field-wide outreach to advance interdisciplinary, evidence-driven education innovation and scalable breakthroughs.

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Summary

The Accelerate, Transform, Scale (ATS) Hub is an effort to advance breakthrough innovations in education through field engagement and capacity building in support of the Institute of Education Science’s Accelerate, Transform, Scale (ATS) Initiative. The Hub delivers infrastructure, resources, and expertise that support different stakeholders in the field of education to generate breakthrough ideas and design and scale evidence-based solutions to persistent challenges.

Through a needs-responsive approach, the Hub offers ATS grantees and prospective applicants workshops and resources that address emerging needs in innovation, product development, research design, and implementation. It also convenes a collaborative community of innovators to share knowledge and accelerate learning across ATS projects. In parallel, the Hub engages the broader field through outreach, communications, and initiatives to expand the pipeline of promising solutions. Together, these efforts aim to drive scalable innovations that transform learner outcomes and expand opportunity.

Full description of project work

Education systems continue to face persistent challenges in improving outcomes and expanding opportunity. At the same time, advances in areas like artificial intelligence and digital tools are rapidly reshaping what is possible in teaching and learning. Despite this momentum, many promising ideas struggle to move beyond early development or fail to take hold in real-world settings.

The ATS Hub addresses this challenge by strengthening the broader ecosystem in which innovation occurs. Rather than focusing on individual projects alone, it works to align people, practices, and knowledge across the field. This includes supporting approaches such as rapid prototyping, user-centered design, and iterative development while also emphasizing accessibility and responsible technology use. By doing so, the Hub helps ensure that new solutions are not only inventive, but also rigorous and capable of reaching the learners and communities who stand to benefit most.

Key Activities

The ATS Hub carries out a coordinated set of activities to support both current ATS grantees and the broader education field.  It provides direct support to grantee teams through workshops, peer learning opportunities, and tailored guidance. These supports are informed by ongoing needs assessments and are designed to strengthen skills in areas such as user-centered design, evaluation, team science, and pathways to scale.

The Hub also develops and curates practical resources such as briefs, field notes, and toolkits that help teams navigate key stages of development. Drawing on prior initiatives like SEERNet and the LEARN Network, it consolidates knowledge into accessible formats and creates a shared foundation for the field.

Community engagement is another central component of the Hub’s work. The Hub convenes a network of stakeholders through events, communications, and ongoing collaboration, helping to establish shared language, highlight emerging priorities, and foster connections across sectors. An interdisciplinary Technical Working Group (TWG) contributes strategic guidance, helping define core practices, identify promising areas for innovation, and shape the overall direction of the work.

Partners and Collaboration

This work is carried out in close collaboration with the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), ensuring alignment with national priorities in education research and innovation and with partners at Digital Promise. The team draws on prior hub models and extensive networks to support a growing community of innovators.

Looking Ahead

As the work continues, the ATS Hub will expand its support for grantees and prospective applicants, strengthen connections across the community, and create additional opportunities to surface and develop new ideas. By supporting both individual teams and the broader ecosystem, the Hub aims to increase the number of promising solutions that are positioned to achieve meaningful reach and long-term impact in education.

Associated fields of research