Office of innovation and Improvement (OII): Investing in Innovation (I3) Fund: Development Grants Full Application CFDA Number 84.411C

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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 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. Development grants provide funding to support the development or testing of practices that are supported by evidence of promise (as defined in this notice) or a strong theory (as defined in this notice) and whose efficacy should be systematically studied. Development grants will support new or substantially more effective practices for addressing widely shared challenges. Development projects are novel and significant nationally, not projects that simply implement existing practices in additional locations or support needs that are primarily local in nature. All Development grantees must evaluate the effectiveness of the project at the level of scale proposed in the application. This notice invites applications for Development grants only. The Department anticipates publishing notices inviting applications for the other types of i3 grants (Validation and Scale-up grants) in the spring of 2016. We remind LEAs of the continuing applicability of the provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) for students who may be served under i3 grants. Any grants in which LEAs participate must be consistent with the rights, protections, and processes established under IDEA for students who are receiving special education and related services or who are in the process of being evaluated to determine their eligibility for such services. Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) Number: 84.411P (Development grants Pre-Application) and 84.411C (Development grants Full Application). Note: To receive an Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) Development grant, an entity must submit a pre-application. The pre-application is intended to reduce the burden of submitting a full application for an i3 Development grant. Pre-applications will be reviewed and scored by peer reviewers using the selection criteria designated in this notice. Entities that submit a highly rated pre-application will be invited to submit a full application for a Development grant; however, any entity that successfully submits a pre-application may choose to submit a full application. On April 25, 2016, we published in the Federal Register (81 FR 24070) a notice inviting applications for new awards for FY 2016 for the i3 Development competition. The deadline for transmittal of full applications was August 16, 2016. We are reopening this competition in order to allow certain eligible applicants affected by the severe storms and flooding in Louisiana (described in more detail below) more time to prepare and submit their applications. Eligibility: Applicants are eligible to submit applications under this reopened competition if they are located in a Federally declared disaster area, as determined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) (see www.fema.gov/news/disasters.fema), and adversely affected by the severe storms and flooding beginning on August 11, 2016, and continuing, in Louisiana.

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