Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE): Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Program: Mid-phase Grants CFDA Number 84.411B | ED GRANTS 020119 002

Opportunity Information: Apply for ED GRANTS 020119 002

The Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Program Mid-phase Grants (CFDA 84.411B) is a discretionary grant competition run by the U.S. Department of Education to support the implementation, replication, and stronger validation of promising education innovations that are intended to improve student achievement and attainment for high-need students. The program is authorized under section 4611 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as amended, and it is built around the idea that schools and communities often develop practical, field-initiated solutions to long-standing education challenges, but those solutions need rigorous evidence and a clear path to scale if they are going to make a meaningful difference beyond a limited set of classrooms or districts.

A defining feature of EIR is its tiered evidence model, which connects the size and ambition of an award to how strong the existing research base is for the proposed approach. Across the broader EIR program, there are three tiers: Early-phase, Mid-phase, and Expansion. Early-phase supports newer ideas with limited evidence so they can be developed, tried, and evaluated on a smaller scale. Expansion supports approaches backed by the strongest evidence so they can be taken to much larger numbers of students across the country. Mid-phase sits in the middle: it is meant for interventions that are past the initial pilot stage and have already demonstrated positive results, but still need a more robust test of impact and practicality at a larger scale before they are ready for full expansion.

This specific notice invites applications for Mid-phase grants only. Mid-phase funding is intended to help organizations implement an innovation more broadly and conduct a rigorous, independent evaluation to measure both outcomes and, where feasible, cost-effectiveness. The Department signals that applicants should, when possible, rely on existing administrative data to support evaluation and analysis, which can reduce burden on schools while still producing credible results. Mid-phase projects are encouraged to operate at a regional or national level, reflecting the program goal of moving beyond a single site or small pilot and learning what it takes to reproduce results in different contexts while maintaining implementation quality.

Because EIR is designed to increase the supply of trustworthy information about what works in education, evaluation is not treated as an add-on. All funded projects are expected to produce evidence about effectiveness that can inform continuous improvement for the grantee and provide useful, transferable knowledge to educators and policymakers elsewhere. The required independent evaluation is meant to clarify whether the innovation improves student outcomes, for which students it works best, and under what conditions it can be implemented successfully. In practice, this emphasis also pushes applicants to think carefully about fidelity of implementation, the real-world constraints that can weaken results as programs grow, and the cost structures that affect whether a promising approach can actually be sustained by schools after federal funding ends.

To be competitive for the Mid-phase tier, applicants must bring moderate evidence of effectiveness, meaning the proposed practice must already be supported by at least one well-designed and well-implemented experimental study showing a statistically significant positive effect on student outcomes or other relevant outcomes for at least one population or setting. In other words, the Department is not looking for an untested concept at this tier; it is looking for an intervention that has cleared an important evidence threshold and is ready for a larger-scale, more definitive test that can confirm impact, examine variability across settings, and strengthen the case for broader adoption.

From an administrative standpoint, applications for this competition were made available February 1, 2019, with an original closing date of April 2, 2019. The Department also included a strongly encouraged, but not mandatory, Notice of Intent to Apply due February 21, 2019, submitted through a short web-based form where applicants identified their organization and the absolute priority or priorities they planned to address. This notice of intent was framed as a way to help the Department plan for a more efficient review process, while explicitly stating that applicants who did not submit the notice could still apply.

In terms of funding scale, the award ceiling for Mid-phase grants under this opportunity was $8,000,000, and the Department anticipated making about 15 awards. The listing describes eligible applicants broadly as “Others,” with the instruction to consult the official Federal Register notice for the precise eligibility rules and any clarifying details. As with many Department of Education discretionary competitions, applicants are directed to the Department’s “Common Instructions for Applicants to Department of Education Discretionary Grant Programs” (published February 12, 2018) for submission procedures and standard requirements, and they are repeatedly advised that the controlling source for requirements, priorities, performance measures, and contact information is the official Federal Register application notice.

Overall, the Mid-phase EIR competition is best understood as federal support for taking a proven but still emerging educational innovation into a more demanding stage of testing and replication. It aims to help grantees answer the kinds of questions that matter when moving from “this worked in one place” to “this can work reliably in many places,” including whether impacts hold up across different communities, what it costs to implement with fidelity, what barriers appear at scale, and what implementation supports are truly necessary to produce the desired outcomes for high-need students.

• The Department of Education in the education sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE): Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Program: Mid-phase Grants CFDA Number 84.411B" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 84.411.
• This funding opportunity was created on Feb 01, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Apr 02, 2019 Applications Available February 1, 2019. Deadline for Notice of Intent to Apply February 21, 2019. We will be able to develop a more efficient process for reviewing grant applications if we know the approximate number of applicants that intend to apply for funding under this competition. Therefore, the Secretary strongly encourages each potential applicant to notify us of the applicantaposs intent to submit an application by completing a web-based form. When completing this form, applicants will provide (1) the applicant organizationaposs name and address and (2) which absolute priorities the applicant intends to address. Applicants may access this form online at www.surveymonkey.com/r/GJ3XS96. Applicants that do not complete this form may still submit an application.. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $8,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 15 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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