Investing in Innovation Fund Announcement

This week, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced plans for the Department’s $650 million “Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund” that was created through the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

The i3 Fund would provide grants on a competitive basis “to districts and non-profits, including colleges and universities, turnaround specialists, charter schools, companies, and other stakeholders.”

Secretary Duncan stated that Investing in Innovation (i3) grants would be available early next year. He indicated that grant proposals to advance the four reforms central to other Recovery Act programs would be a factor in the selection process. The four reform areas identified by the Department are college and career-ready standards, data systems that track student progress and support improved instruction, teacher and principal quality, and support for schools needing improvement. These four priorities are a key goal of the Recovery’s Act State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF) and the primary focus of the Race to the Top (RTTT) grant program.
 
“First, we're looking for programs that will be outcome-driven, not input-driven,” Secretary Duncan stated. “We're looking for ways to boost student achievement, matriculation, and graduation rates--and we expect successful applicants will be able to demonstrate some success in closing achievement gaps, moving students toward proficiency, increasing graduation rates, and retaining high-quality teachers and principals.”

Secretary Duncan and Jim Shelton, deputy assistant secretary for innovation and improvement, discussed the program’s goal of funding successful programs that can be replicated and sustained to benefit thousands of students.

“Recognizing the fact that these are challenging times, we still expect that grant recipients will provide some public or private dollars to ensure that programs are sustainable,” Secretary Duncan added.

The i3 grants will fall into three categories, according to Duncan:
• Pure Innovation grants of up to about $5 million dollars for promising ideas that should be tried;
• Strategic Investment grants of up to roughly $30 million for programs that need to build a research base or organizational capacity to succeed at a larger scale; and,
• Grow What Works grants that will go as high as $50 million for proven programs that are ready to grow and expand.

Shelton stated that a Notice of Proposed Priorities for the i3 fund will be published in the Federal Register this fall to solicit public comments, followed by the application process. NSBA will keep you updated as the implementation process for this program moves forward.