Note:
Each funding opportunity description is a synopsis of information in the Federal Register application notice.
For specific information about eligibility, please see the official application notice.
The official version of this document is the document published in the Federal Register.
Free
credit:
Internet access to the official edition of the Federal Register and the Code of Federal Regulations is available on GPO Access at:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/index.html.
Please review the official application notice for pre-application and application requirements, application submission information, performance measures, priorities and program contact information.
Purpose of Program:
The Investing in Innovation Fund (i3), established under section 14007 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), provides funding to support (1) local educational agencies (LEAs), and (2) nonprofit organizations in partnership with (a) one or more LEAs or (b) a consortium of schools.
The i3 program is designed to generate and validate solutions to persistent educational challenges and to support the expansion of effective solutions to serve substantially larger numbers of students.
The central design element of the i3 program is its multi-tier structure that links the amount of funding that an applicant may receive to the quality of the evidence supporting the efficacy of the proposed project.
Applicants proposing practices supported by limited evidence can receive relatively small grants that support the development and initial evaluation of promising practices and help to identify new solutions to pressing challenges; applicants proposing practices supported by evidence from rigorous evaluations, such as large randomized controlled trials, can receive sizable grants to support expansion across the country.
This structure provides incentives for applicants to build evidence of effectiveness of their proposed projects and to address the barriers to serving more students across schools, districts, and States.
As importantly, all i3 projects are required to generate additional evidence of effectiveness.
All i3 grantees must use part of their budgets to conduct independent evaluations (as defined in this notice) of their projects.
This requirement ensures that projects funded under the i3 program contribute significantly to improving the information available to practitioners and policymakers about which practices work, for which types of students, and in what contexts.
The Department awards three types of grants under this program:
``Development'' grants, ``Validation'' grants, and ``Scale-up'' grants.
These grants differ in terms of the level of prior evidence of effectiveness required for consideration of funding, the level of scale the funded project should reach, and, consequently, the amount of funding available to support the project.
This notice invites applications for Validation grants only.
The notice inviting applications for Scale-up grants is published elsewhere in this issue of the Federal Register.
The notice inviting applications for Development grants was published in the Federal Register on April 25, 2016 (81 FR 24070) and is available at https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-04-25/pdf/2016-0943 6. pdf.
Validation grants provide funding to support expansion of projects supported by moderate evidence of effectiveness (as defined in this notice) to the regional level (as defined in this notice) or to the national level (as defined in this notice).
In addition, as Validation projects seek to improve outcomes for students in high need schools, they also generate important information about an intervention's effectiveness and the contexts for which a practice is most effective.
We expect that Validation grants will increase practitioners' and policymakers' understanding of the implementation of proven practices, and help identify effective approaches to expanding such practices while also maintaining or increasing their effectiveness across Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Number:
8 4. 411B (Validation Grants).
Applications for grants under the i3 program, CFDA number 8 4. 411B (Validation grants), must be submitted electronically using the Governmentwide Grants.gov Apply site at www.Grants.gov.
Through this site, you will be able to download a copy of the application package, complete it offline, and then upload and submit your application.
You may not email an electronic copy of a grant application to us.
You may access the electronic grant application for the i3 program at www.Grants.gov.
You must search for the downloadable application package for this competition by the CFDA number.
Do not include the CFDA number's alpha suffix in your search (e.g., search for 8 4. 411, not 8 4. 411B).