The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) Offers Mid-Phase Grants for Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Program

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.

For the addresses for obtaining and submitting an application, please refer to our Revised Common Instructions for Applicants to Department of Education Discretionary Grant Programs, published in the Federal Register on December 7, 2022.

Purpose of Program: The EIR program, established under section 4611 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as amended (ESEA), provides funding to create, develop, implement, replicate, or take to scale entrepreneurial, evidence-based (as defined in this notice), field-initiated innovations to improve student achievement and attainment for high-need students; and to rigorously evaluate such innovations. The EIR program is designed to generate and validate solutions to persistent education challenges and to support the expansion of those solutions to serve substantially more students.                The central design element of the EIR program is its multi-tier structure that links the amount of funding an applicant may receive to the quality of the evidence supporting the efficacy of the proposed project. One of the program’s goals is for projects to build evidence that will allow them advance through EIR’s grant tiers: “Early-phase,” “Mid-phase,” and “Expansion.”                Early-phase,” “Mid-phase,” and “Expansion” grants differ in terms of the evidence of effectiveness required to be considered for funding, the expectations regarding the kind of evidence and information funded projects should produce, the scale of funded projects, and, consequently, the amount of funding available to support each type of project.                Mid-phase grants are supported by moderate evidence (as defined in this notice). Mid-phase grants provide funding for the implementation and rigorous evaluation of a program, which has been successfully implemented under an Early-phase grant or other similar effort, such as developing and testing an innovative education practice at a local level, for the purpose of measuring the program’s impact and cost-effectiveness.                This notice invites applications for Mid-phase grants only. The notices inviting applications for Early-phase and Expansion grants are published elsewhere in this issue of the Federal Register.

Assistance Listing Number (ALN) 84.411B.