60D FR Notice

90808

Federal Register / Vol. 81, No. 241 / Thursday, December 15, 2016 / Notices

their effectiveness at improving student
outcomes in multiple contexts; (4) the
percentage of grantees with a completed
well-designed, well-implemented, and
independent evaluation that provides
information about the key elements and
the approach of the project so as to
facilitate replication or testing in other
settings; (5) the percentage of grantees
with an evaluation that provided
information on the cost effectiveness of
the key practices, and obstacles and
success factors to scaling; and (6) the
cost per student served by the grant.
5. Continuation Awards: In making a
continuation award under 34 CFR
75.253, the Secretary considers, among
other things: Whether a grantee has
made substantial progress in achieving
the goals and objectives of the project;
whether the grantee has expended funds
in a manner that is consistent with its
approved application and budget; and,
if the Secretary has established
performance measurement
requirements, the performance targets in
the grantee’s approved application.
In making a continuation award, the
Secretary also considers whether the
grantee is operating in compliance with
the assurances in its approved
application, including those applicable
to Federal civil rights laws that prohibit
discrimination in programs or activities
receiving Federal financial assistance
from the Department (34 CFR 100.4,
104.5, 106.4, 108.8, and 110.23).
VII. Agency Contact
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

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Kelly Terpak, U.S. Department of
Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW.,
Room 4W312, Washington, DC 20202–
5900. Telephone: (202) 453–7122. FAX:
(202) 401–4123 or by email: eir@ed.gov.
If you use a TDD or a TTY, call the
Federal Relay Service, toll free, at 1–
800–877–8339.
VIII. Other Information
Accessible Format: Individuals with
disabilities can obtain this document
and a copy of the application package in
an accessible format (e.g., braille, large
print, audiotape, or compact disc) on
request to the program contact person
listed under For Further Information
Contact in section VII of this notice.
Electronic Access to This Document:
The official version of this document is
the document published in the Federal
Register. Free Internet access to the
official edition of the Federal Register
and the Code of Federal Regulations is
available via the Federal Digital System
at: www.gpo.gov/fdsys. At this site you
can view this document, as well as all
other documents of this Department
published in the Federal Register, in

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text or Portable Document Format
(PDF). To use PDF you must have
Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is
available free at the site.
You may also access documents of the
Department published in the Federal
Register by using the article search
feature at: www.federalregister.gov.
Specifically, through the advanced
search feature at this site, you can limit
your search to documents published by
the Department.
Dated: December 9, 2016.
Nadya Chinoy Dabby,
Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and
Improvement.
[FR Doc. 2016–30086 Filed 12–14–16; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4000–01–P

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
[Docket No. ED–2016–ICCC–0141]

Agency Information Collection
Activities; Comment Request; Grant
Application Form for Project
Objectives and Performance Measures
Information
Office of the Secretary (OS),
Department of Education (ED).
ACTION: Notice.
AGENCY:

In accordance with the
Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44
U.S.C. chapter 3501 et seq.), ED is
proposing a new information collection.
DATES: Interested persons are invited to
submit comments on or before February
13, 2017.
ADDRESSES: To access and review all the
documents related to the information
collection listed in this notice, please
use http://www.regulations.gov by
searching the Docket ID number ED–
2016–ICCC–0141. Comments submitted
in response to this notice should be
submitted electronically through the
Federal eRulemaking Portal at http://
www.regulations.gov by selecting the
Docket ID number or via postal mail,
commercial delivery, or hand delivery.
Please note that comments submitted by
fax or email and those submitted after
the comment period will not be
accepted. Written requests for
information or comments submitted by
postal mail or delivery should be
addressed to the Director of the
Information Collection Clearance
Division, U.S. Department of Education,
400 Maryland Avenue SW., LBJ, Room
2E–343, Washington, DC 20202–4537.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For
specific questions related to collection
activities, please contact Alfreida
Pettiford, 202–245–6110.
SUMMARY:

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The
Department of Education (ED), in
accordance with the Paperwork
Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA) (44 U.S.C.
3506(c)(2)(A)), provides the general
public and Federal agencies with an
opportunity to comment on proposed,
revised, and continuing collections of
information. This helps the Department
assess the impact of its information
collection requirements and minimize
the public’s reporting burden. It also
helps the public understand the
Department’s information collection
requirements and provide the requested
data in the desired format. ED is
soliciting comments on the proposed
information collection request (ICR) that
is described below. The Department of
Education is especially interested in
public comment addressing the
following issues: (1) Is this collection
necessary to the proper functions of the
Department; (2) will this information be
processed and used in a timely manner;
(3) is the estimate of burden accurate;
(4) how might the Department enhance
the quality, utility, and clarity of the
information to be collected; and (5) how
might the Department minimize the
burden of this collection on the
respondents, including through the use
of information technology. Please note
that written comments received in
response to this notice will be
considered public records.
Title of Collection: Grant Application
Form for Project Objectives and
Performance Measures Information.
OMB Control Number: 1894–NEW.
Type of Review: A new information
collection.
Respondents/Affected Public: Private
Sector.
Total Estimated Number of Annual
Responses: 6,349.
Total Estimated Number of Annual
Burden Hours: 31,745.
Abstract: The U.S. Department of
Education Grant Application Form for
Project Objectives and Performance
Measures Information serves as a
precursor to the U.S. Department of
Education Grant Performance Report
Form (ED 524 B) in which project
objectives, measures, and targets will be
entered by applicants at the time that
grant applications are entered in
Grants.gov.
The Grant Application Form for
Project Objectives and Performance
Measures Information form and
instructions are used by many ED
discretionary grant programs to enable
grantees to meet ED deadline dates for
submission of performance reports to
the Department.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

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Federal Register / Vol. 81, No. 241 / Thursday, December 15, 2016 / Notices
Dated: December 12, 2016.
Stephanie Valentine,
Acting Director, Information Collection
Clearance Division, Office of the Chief Privacy
Officer, Office of Management.
[FR Doc. 2016–30106 Filed 12–14–16; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4000–01–P

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Applications for New Awards;
Education Innovation and Research
Program—Early-Phase Grants
Office of Innovation and
Improvement, Department of Education.
ACTION: Notice.
AGENCY:

Overview Information
Education Innovation and Research
Program—Early-phase Grants.
Notice inviting applications for new
awards for fiscal year (FY) 2017.
Catalog of Federal Domestic
Assistance (CFDA) Number: 84.411C
(Early-phase Grants).
DATES:
Applications Available: December 19,
2016.
Deadline for Notice of Intent To
Apply: February 13, 2017.
Deadline for Transmittal of
Applications: April 13, 2017.
Deadline for Intergovernmental
Review: June 13, 2017.

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Full Text of Announcement
I. Funding Opportunity Description
Purpose of Program: The Education
Innovation and Research (EIR) Program,
established under section 4611 of the
Elementary and Secondary Education
Act (ESEA), as amended by Every
Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), provides
funding to create, develop, implement,
replicate, or take to scale
entrepreneurial, evidence-based, fieldinitiated innovations to improve student
achievement (as defined in this notice)
and attainment for high-need students
(as defined in this notice); and
rigorously evaluate such innovations.
The EIR 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 EIR
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, with the
expectation that projects that build this
evidence will advance through EIR’s
grant tiers. Applicants proposing

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innovative projects that are supported
by limited evidence can receive
relatively small grants to support the
development, iteration, and initial
evaluation of the practices (as defined in
this notice); applicants proposing
projects supported by evidence from
rigorous evaluations, such as large
randomized controlled trials (as defined
in this notice), can receive larger grant
awards to support expansion across the
country. This structure provides
incentives for applicants to: (1) Explore
new ways of addressing persistent
challenges that other educators can
build on and learn from; (2) build
evidence of effectiveness of their
practices; and (3) replicate and scale
successful practices in new schools,
districts, and states while addressing the
barriers to scale, such as cost structures
and implementation fidelity.
All EIR projects are expected to
generate information regarding their
effectiveness in order to inform EIR
grantees’ efforts to learn about and
improve upon their efforts, and to help
similar, non-EIR efforts across the
country benefit from EIR grantees’
knowledge. By requiring that all
grantees conduct independent
evaluations (as defined in this notice) of
their EIR projects, EIR ensures that its
funded projects make a significant
contribution to improving the quality
and quantity of information available to
practitioners and policymakers about
which practices improve student
achievement, for which types of
students, and in what contexts.
The Department of Education
(Department) awards three types of
grants under this program: ‘‘Earlyphase’’ grants, ‘‘Mid-phase’’ grants, and
‘‘Expansion’’ grants. These grants differ
in terms of the level of prior evidence
of effectiveness required for
consideration for funding, the
expectations regarding the kind of
evidence and information funded
projects should produce, the level of
scale funded projects should reach, and,
consequently, the amount of funding
available to support each type of project.
EIR Early-phase grants provide
funding to support the development,
iteration, implementation, and
feasibility testing of practices that are
expected to be novel and significant
relative to others that are underway
nationally. These Early-phase grants are
not intended simply to implement
established practices in additional
locations or address needs that are
unique to one particular context. The
goal is to determine whether and in
what ways relatively newer practices
can improve student achievement for
high-need students.

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This notice invites applications for
Early-phase grants only. The notices
inviting applications for Mid-phase and
Expansion grants are published
elsewhere in this issue of the Federal
Register.
Background: EIR builds on seven
years of investments—over $1.4 billion,
matched by over $200 million in private
sector resources—from the Department’s
Investing in Innovation (i3) program. i3
has generated new information
regarding effective educational practices
and increased evaluators’ capacity to
conduct rigorous evaluations of student
learning outcomes that provide
actionable information for educators.
EIR is designed to build upon the
successes of i3 to offer new
opportunities for States, districts,
schools, and educators to develop
innovations and scale effective practices
that address their most pressing
challenges.
Early-phase EIR grantees are expected
to continuously make improvements in
project design and implementation
before conducting a full-scale evaluation
of effectiveness. Grantees should
consider questions such as:
• How easy would it be for others to
implement this practice, and how can
its implementation be improved?
• How can I use data from early
indicators to gauge impact, and what
changes in implementation and student
achievement do these early indicators
suggest? By focusing on continuous
improvement and iterative
development, Early-stage grantees can
make adaptations that are necessary to
increase their practice’s potential to be
effective and ensure that its EIR-funded
evaluation assesses the impact of a
thoroughly conceived practice.
In order to leverage existing
information that can inform which
kinds of practices could have a
meaningful impact on underserved
students, Early-phase applicants must
demonstrate a rationale (as defined in
this notice) for their project. In addition,
like all EIR grantees, Early-stage
grantees are expected to conduct an
independent evaluation. Given EIR’s
goal of helping develop a collective
body of evidence that can inform the
future expansion and refinement of
practices that effectively serve highneed students, Early-stage grantees’
evaluation designs are expected to have
the potential meet the moderate
evidence (as defined in this notice)
threshold. Not only will such evaluation
data build the knowledge base about
effective practices for underserved
students, but it will also encourage
prospective Mid-phase applicants to
leverage the findings from Early-phase

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