2014 i3 Grant Competition Launched

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has announced the start of the 2014 Investing in Innovation (i3) program. The announcement invites pre-applications for Development grant funding. With a total of $134 million for the 2014 i3 program, Development grants are expected to provide up to $3 million each in funding.

Focused on improving student achievement, the i3 program is designed to generate and validate solutions to persistent educational challenges and to support the expansion of effective solutions across the country. As in past years, the i3 program will continue to fund innovative strategies within three distinct categories:

• Development grants fund the development or testing of practices that are supported by evidence of promise or theory (as defined by ED). Development grants will support new or substantially more effective practices for addressing widely shared challenges.
• Validation grants fund the expansion of projects supported by moderate evidence of effectiveness (as defined by ED) to the national or regional level.
• Scale-up grants fund the expansion of projects supported by strong evidence of effectiveness (as defined by ED) to the national level. In addition to improving outcomes for an increasing number of high-need students, Scale-up grants will generate information about the students and contexts for which a practice is most effective. 

Pre-Applications for Development grants are due April 14, 2014. Applications for the Validation and Scale-Up grant opportunities will be announced in late spring 2014. For more information, check out the ED website.