The Committee for External Research Review (CERR), led by the Strategic Data and Evaluation Branch, reviews, approves, and monitors all research conducted in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). If you are looking to conduct research inside LAUSD schools or plan on contacting anyone associated with the District (administrators, teachers, parents, students) as part of your research study or evaluation, you must submit a proposal to CERR for review and approval. If your research study or evaluation requires individual-level data (e.g., student or staff), you will be also required to submit a Data Use Agreement for review and approval. If you only need school- or district-level data, you will find a wide array of publicly-available information regarding the work of LAUSD and its impact on students, teachers, principals and parents in the LAUSD Open Data Portal: http://opendata.lausd.net 

Please be aware that the proposal and approval process can take several months to complete so CERR strongly encourages researchers to plan accordingly.

If you have any questions about CERR or the research proposal submission process, please email Carolin Alexander. You can also call (213) 241-4100.  

CERR is no longer accepting research proposals for the April submission window. The next submission window will be from October 1st 2023, to October 31st, 2023. 

Due to the difficulties experienced by our school and District communities, we will be approving only a select few proposals from every submission in 2023-24. Only those research projects found by program decision-makers to be of concrete and timely benefit to the District will be considered. CERR, in concert with program staff, will determine the benefit to the District proposed by the researcher(s).

For the October 2023 submission window, only submissions proposing projects beginning in Spring 2024 or afterward will be accepted. 

In addition, please note that at this time we are NOT accepting proposals from graduate students who wish to distribute and collect surveys. Graduate students may still submit proposals that focus on qualitative research and/or administrative data (quantitative).   

To submit your research proposal for review, please go to LAUSD Research Guidelines and Submission Process. The link to submit your research proposal can be found on the LAUSD Research Guidelines and Submission Process page (only available during the submission window). 

Proposals submitted during submission windows will go through an initial review within 30-40 working days from the date of submission, depending on the number of submissions received. However, approval requires program input so plan your research study period accordingly and submit proposals early