The U.S. Department of Education announced the potential grantees for the Investing in Innovation (i3) competition, which awards more than $103 million to launch and expand evidence-based practices to support educators and students.
“[The] announcement reflects educators’ deep commitment to students,” said John B. King Jr., secretary of education at the Department of Education. “Educators are constantly developing new ideas to better assist their students, and i3 empowers educators to develop these approaches into practices that can benefit schools and districts across the country.”
Out of 385 applications, 15 were selected to move forward. They will have to secure matching private sector funds by December 2016 in order to receive Federal funding.
“Investing in research and development is what drives innovation. We see this in our country’s technology, defense, and health care sectors, and we are proud to support such investments in education,” said Nadya Chinoy Dabby, assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement at the Department of Education. “The i3 program helps educators turn their innovations into scalable practices that improve students’ lives, and we are thrilled to announce 15 projects that have the potential to reach almost 375,000 students.”
This program awards grants across three categories—development, validation, and scale-up. The program launched in 2010 and has received more than 5,000 applications. If this year’s grantees receive private sector funding, the program will have funded 172 applications at more than $1.4 billion.
The finalists announced will be included in the final i3 cohort, and the Department of Education hopes to have its first Education Innovation and Research competition next year.
Finalists include:
- Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of Arizona State University for development.
- Cabarrus County (N.C.) Schools for development.
- Florida State University for development.
- HighScope Educational Research Foundation for development.
- Leading Educators for development.
- Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility for development.
- Region One Education Service Center for development.
- Riverside County (Calif.) Office of Education for development.
- Santa Ana (Calif.) Unified School District for development.
- Virginia Advanced Study Strategies for development.
- Fresno County (Calif.) Office of Education for validation.
- Texas A&M University for validation.
- Uncommon Schools for validation.
- National Writing Project for scale-up.
- Spurwink Services for scale-up.