20732 Federal Register / Vol. 66, No. 79 / Tuesday, April 24, 2001 / Notices

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

[CFDA No. 84.305T]

Office of Educational Research and

Improvement (OERI); Field-Initiated

Studies (FIS) Education Research

Grant Program; Notice of Application

Review Procedures for New Awards for

the Second Cycle of Fiscal Year (FY)

2001

SUMMARY: On September 22, 2000 we

published in the Federal Register (65

FR 57326) a notice of application review

procedures for new awards for FY 2001

for the FIS Education Research Grant

Program. These procedures governed

the first cycle of the competition and

modified the procedures governing the

review of applications in 34 CFR part

700. This notice establishes procedures

that OERI will use to review

applications for the second cycle of the

FIS competition.

Application Review Procedure

OERI will continue to use a one-tier

review process for the second cycle of

the FY 2001 FIS program competition.

OERI will form eleven review panels.

Each panel will be composed of

reviewers who are expert in a particular

substantive area. Each panel will have

approximately 12–15 members.

Applications will be assigned to review

panels where the expertise of the panel

matches the topic of the application. All

applications assigned to a panel will be

mailed to all members of that review

panel for review. Each application will

be assigned to three Lead Reviewers

who have particular expertise related to

the topic of that application. Prior to the

panel meeting, each of the three Lead

Reviewers will independently complete

technical review forms for the assigned

applications. On those forms, the Lead

Reviewers document their judgment

regarding the strengths and weaknesses

of the applications they have been

assigned according to the published

selection criteria and assign a

preliminary rating for each of the

criteria on each of those applications.

The three selection criteria were cited in

the application package: National

Significance, Quality of the Project

Design, and Quality and Potential

Contributions of Personnel. The Lead

Reviewers will select from one of the

following to indicate the preliminary

rating for a specific criterion for each

application: Exceptional quality, High

quality, Moderate quality, or Low

quality.

In addition, all reviewers are expected

to be familiar enough with all of the

applications to participate in a

discussion of the applications at the

review panel meeting. At the review

panel meeting, the three Lead Reviewers

lead a discussion of the applications

they have been assigned. Other panelists

then ask questions of the three Lead

Reviewers when necessary. Following

the full discussion of each application,

all panelists assign their ratings for each

criterion on that application, using the

rating scale described in this notice. At

that time, the three Lead Reviewers may

also change their preliminary ratings if

they wish.

Ratings provided by individual

reviewers across the three rating criteria

will be translated by OERI into

numerical scores where a rating of

‘‘exceptional quality’’ will be assigned a

3, a rating of ‘‘high quality’’ will be

assigned a 2, a rating of ‘‘moderate

quality’’ will be assigned a 1, and a

rating of ‘‘low quality’’ will be assigned

a 0. In cases where scores provided by

50% or more of the reviewers on a

particular application are 2 or higher

(i.e., ‘‘high quality’’ or ‘‘exceptional

quality’’) for all three rating criteria, a

multiplier will be used. In these cases,

the scores of only those reviews

comprised of ‘‘high quality’’ or

‘‘exceptional quality’’ for all three

criteria will be multiplied by 1.25. The

use of a multiplier favors those

applications that receive consistently

high ratings.

To construct the funding slate, a

numeric average for each application

will be determined. To determine the

average score, the total of the numeric

scores provided by all reviewers for a

given application will be divided by the

number of reviewers who rated that

application. The resulting array of

average scores will form the funding

slate.

For this competition, potential

applicants were invited to submit letters

of intent. In the letter of intent,

applicants identified the panel they

thought was best suited to review their

application. Applicants are hereby

notified that the data in the letters of

intent were collected for administrative

purposes only. OERI reserves the right

to assign any application to any panel

where the agency believes the reviewers

are best qualified to review that

application.

Waiver of Proposed Rulemaking

In accordance with the

Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C.

553), it is the practice of the Secretary

to offer interested parties the

opportunity to comment on proposed

regulations. However, because this

notice merely establishes procedural

requirements for review of applications

and does not create substantive policy,

proposed rulemaking is not required

under 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(A).

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Elizabeth Payer, Office of Educational

Research and Improvement, U.S.

Department of Education, 555 New

Jersey Avenue, NW., room 502e,

Washington, DC 20208–5645.

Telephone: (202) 219–1310 or via

Internet: Elizabeth_Payer@ed.gov.

If you use a telecommunications

device for the deaf (TDD), you may call

the Federal Information Relay Service

(FIRS) at 1–800–877–8339.

Individuals with disabilities may

obtain this document in an alternative

format (e.g., Braille, large print,

audiotape, or computer diskette) on

request to the program contact person

listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

CONTACT.

Electronic Access to This Document

You may view this document, as well

as all other Department of Education

documents published in the Federal

Register, in text or Adobe Portable

Document Format (PDF) on the Internet

at the following site: http://www.ed.gov/

legislation/FedRegister.

To use PDF you must have Adobe

Acrobat Reader, which is available free

at this site. If you have questions about

using PDF, call the U.S. Government

Printing Office (GPO), toll free, at 1–

888–293–6498; or in the Washington,

DC, area at (202) 512–1530.

Note: 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.

Program Authority: 20 U.S.C.

6031(c)(2)(B).

Dated: April 20, 2001.

Sue Betka,

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Educational

Research and Improvement.

[FR Doc. 01–10267 Filed 4–20–01; 2:09 pm]

BILLING CODE 4000–01–U