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Please read before you use PRISM
PRISM is offered for concept development and self-reflection only. It is not sanctioned by IES, and it does not represent feedback, guidance, or advice from IES or from any program officer. The scores and suggestions are one additional point of view to help you think through your proposal. They are not a judgment of your eligibility or quality, and they are not a definitive statement of what you should change. For any specific competition, always rely on the official RFP and IES guidance for what reviewers are looking for.
A free self-assessment that benchmarks your project’s readiness across three dimensions and drafts a risk plan, so you can find and fix the weak spots in your concept before you apply.
PRISM: An R&D Readiness Self-Assessment
PRISM is a free tool from SETA-ED that helps education R&D teams see where their project stands today and where it aims to go next. Paste in a proposal or a concept description, and PRISM returns a readiness benchmark across three dimensions along with a draft risk plan you can act on. Teams use it to pressure-test an idea before they submit it, and to track how far a project has matured over the life of a grant.
What you get
For any proposal you enter, PRISM produces a three-dimensional readiness snapshot. Prototype readiness asks whether the product works as intended in real classrooms. People readiness asks who is at the table and who holds decision-making power. Process readiness asks whether the team surfaces and acts on evidence and ethics at every step.
Alongside those scores, PRISM drafts a risk plan in the style used by federal R&D agencies such as NASA and the Advanced Research Project Agencies. It names the risks visible in the proposal and pairs each one with a short-term and a long-term mitigation, so a high-risk idea has a credible path toward becoming a fundable one. Every score comes with a short evidence note drawn from your own text, which you can review and adjust wherever your judgment differs.
Who it is for
PRISM is built for teams developing breakthrough education solutions. If you are preparing to apply, use it to find any weak spots in your concept while you still have time to address them. If you are already funded, use it to benchmark your starting point, set targets for where you want to be by the end of the grant, and show progress against those benchmarks. Program teams and reviewers can also use PRISM to hold unlike projects to a common standard of maturity.
The framework behind it
PRISM puts into practice the readiness framework laid out in The Missing Yardstick, SETA-ED’s white paper adapting NASA’s readiness logic for education R&D. The three readiness ladders draw on decades of practice in aerospace, defense, and advanced research, adapted over five years to center equity and justice in what counts as readiness. The framework is open and free to use under a Creative Commons license, with or without the tool.
How to use it
- Open the tool and paste your proposal text or concept description.
- Name your venture and run the analysis. PRISM scores every readiness question and drafts your risk plan in under a minute.
- Read the evidence notes behind each score, adjust anything you see differently, and use the gaps it surfaces to sharpen your proposal.
Note that your entry/ies are anonymous and are not accessible to ATS/IES.