65082 Federal Register / Vol. 66, No. 242 / Monday, December 17, 2001 / Notices

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

[CFDA No. 84.305J]

Office of Educational Research and

Improvement (OERI): Preschool

Curriculum Evaluation Research Grant

Program Notice Inviting Applications

for New Awards for Fiscal Year (FY)

2002

Purpose of Program: The purpose of

this program is to implement rigorous

evaluations of preschool curricula that

will provide information to support

informed choices of classroom curricula

for early childhood programs. This

competition will focus support on a new

program of research that will determine,

through randomized clinical trials,

whether one or more curricula produce

educationally meaningful effects on

children.

Eligible Applicants: Public and

private agencies, institutions, and

organizations, including for-profit and

non-profit organizations; institutions of

higher education; State and local

education agencies; and regional

educational laboratories.

Deadline for Receipt of Letter of

Intent: January 15, 2002.

A Letter of Intent is optional, but

encouraged, for each application. The

Letter of Intent is for OERI planning

purposes and will not be used in the

evaluation of the application.

Applications Available: December 17,

2001.

Deadline for Transmittal of

Applications: March 15, 2002.

Estimated Available Funds: Up to

$4,000,000 for the first year of this

program.

The estimated amount of funds

available for new awards is based on the

Administration’s request for this

program for FY 2002. The actual level

of funding, if any, depends on final

congressional action. However, we are

inviting applications to allow enough

time to complete the grant process if

Congress appropriates funds for this

program.

Estimated Size of Awards: Funds

available per award will depend on the

sample size, the nature of the

supplemental research proposed, and

any non-federal resources to be devoted

to the project. We expect to be able to

make about 10 awards and that a typical

first year award, with the minimal

sample size, described subsequently,

will be approximately $350,000.

Estimated Number of Awards: 10.

Note: The Department is not bound by any

estimates in this notice.

Project Period: Up to 48 months.

Page Limits: The application must

include the following sections: title page

form (ED 424), one-page abstract,

research narrative, literature cited,

curriculum vitae for principal

investigator(s) and other key personnel,

budget summary form (ED 524) with

budget narrative, appendix, and

statement of equitable access (GEPA

427). The research narrative is where

you, the applicant, address the selection

criteria that reviewers use to evaluate

your application. You must limit the

research narrative (text plus all figures,

charts, tables, and diagrams) to the

equivalent of 25 pages and the appendix

to 20 pages, using the following

standards:

• A ‘‘page’’ is 8.5′′ x 11′′, on one side

only, with 1′′ margins at the top, bottom,

and both sides.

• Double space (no more than three

lines per vertical inch) all text in the

research narrative, including titles,

headings, footnotes, quotations,

references, and captions, as well as all

text in charts, tables, figures, and

graphs.

• Use a font that is either 12-point or

larger or no smaller than 10 pitch

(characters per inch).

The page limit does not apply to the

title page form, the one-page abstract,

the budget summary form and narrative

budget justification, the curriculum

vitae, literature cited, or the assurances

and certifications.

Our reviewers will not read any pages

of your application that—

• Exceed the page limit if you apply

these standards; or

• Exceed the equivalent of the page

limit if you apply other standards.

We have found that reviewers are able

to conduct the highest quality review

when applications are concise and easy

to read, with pages consecutively

numbered.

Applicable Statute and Regulations:

(a) 20 U.S.C. 6031; (b) The Education

Department General Administrative

Regulations (EDGAR) in 34 CFR parts

74, 75 (except as limited in 34 CFR

700.5), 77, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86 (part 86

applies only to Institutions of Higher

Education), 97, 98, and 99; and (c) The

regulations in 34 CFR part 700.

Selection Criteria: The Secretary

selects the following selection criteria in

34 CFR 700.30(e) to evaluate

applications for new grants under this

competition. The criteria below will

receive the following percentage

weights.

(a) National Significance (.2)

(b) Quality of the Project Design (.5)

(c) Quality and Potential Contributions

of Personnel (.2)

(d) Adequacy of Resources (.1)

Strong applications for Preschool

Curriculum Evaluation Research (PCER)

grants clearly address each of the

applicable selection criteria. They make

a well-reasoned and compelling case for

the national significance of the

problems or issues that will be the

subject of the proposed research, and

present a research design that is

complete, clearly delineated, and

incorporates sound research methods. In

addition, the personnel descriptions

included in strong applications make it

apparent that the project director,

principal investigator, and other key

personnel possess training and

experience commensurate with their

duties.

Pre-Application Meeting: We will

hold a pre-application meeting on

January 24, 2002, to discuss the funding

priority. You are invited to participate.

You will receive technical assistance

and information about the funding

priority. The meeting will be held at the

U.S. Department of Education, Office of

Educational Research and Improvement,

555 New Jersey Avenue, NW., room 101,

Washington, DC, between 1 p.m. and 4

p.m. A summary of the meeting will be

posted on the Internet at:

http://www.ed.gov/offices/OERI 

Assistance to Individuals With

Disabilities at the Meeting

The meeting site is accessible to

individuals with disabilities. If you will

need an auxiliary aid or service to

participate in the meeting (e.g.,

interpreting service, assistive listening

device, or materials in an alternate

format), notify the contact person listed

under FOR APPLICATIONS AND FURTHER

INFORMATION CONTACT at least two weeks

before the scheduled meeting date.

Although we will attempt to meet a

request we receive after that date, we

may not be able to make available the

requested auxiliary aid or service

because of insufficient time to arrange

it.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Background

Research has long established the

importance of early experiences in

supporting successful child

development. More recently, the focus

has turned to the role of early child-care

and preschool experiences in

supporting cognitive development and

other skills that are essential for

successful transition into school. Policy

makers have begun to respond to the

mounting evidence of the importance of

early experience with calls to provide

better quality preschool programs. For

example, The National Research

Council’s 2000 report, Eager to Learn,

concluded that: ‘‘Many children,

Federal Register / Vol. 66, No. 242 / Monday, December 17, 2001 / Notices 65083

especially those in low-income

households, are served in child care

programs of such low quality that

learning and development are not

enhanced and may even be

jeopardized.’’ Furthermore, the First

Lady’s White House Summit on Early

Childhood Cognitive Development, held

in 2001, called attention to the need for

preschool programs to enhance their

instructional content in the area of early

cognition and pre-reading skills. One

result of the Early Childhood Cognitive

Development Summit was the formation

of an Interagency Task Force in Early

Childhood Development involving

representatives from the U.S.

Department of Education, Health and

Human Services, and the National

Institute of Child Health and Human

Development. This funding

announcement is one product of that

Task Force.

The evidence that would allow

informed choices of classroom curricula

for early childhood programs is weak.

When rigorous preschool program

evaluations exist, they are for programs

designed and delivered decades ago.

Most currently available curricula have

no link to those historical programs, and

those that do have changed in content

and method of delivery as they have

evolved over the years. While the results

from historical evaluations of preschool

curricula and current research on the

learning and development of young

children provide some insights into

general features of successful preschool

programs, they give little guidance for

selecting from among the everexpanding list of available preschool

curricula. For example, the State of

Georgia, which has a universal pre-K

program, allows providers to choose

among seven different nationally

available curricula. There is little

evidence that would allow providers to

make an informed choice among these

curricula. New York, another state

providing universal pre-K, does not

provide a list of approved curricula.

Instead it requires that approved

providers deliver a curriculum that

conforms to general guidelines such as

meeting ‘‘the social, cognitive,

linguistic, emotional, cultural and

physical needs of all eligible children.’’

However, there is little evidence for

choosing among curriculum options

based on such guidelines. The Preschool

Curriculum Evaluation Research (PCER)

grants are intended to address the lack

of rigorous, systematic evaluation of

preschool curricula that are currently in

use for children in the pre-K years.

PCER is intended to build on recent

initiatives aimed at evaluating the

preschool experiences of children. In

1997, Head Start undertook The Family

and Child Experiences Survey (FACES),

a large-scale national study of Head

Start programs. FACES is a national

longitudinal study of the cognitive,

social, emotional, and physical

development of children; the

characteristics, well-being, and

accomplishments of their families; the

observed characteristics of their

classrooms; and the characteristics,

needs, and opinions of their teachers

and other program staff. In addition, the

Early Childhood Longitudinal SurveyKindergarten (ECLS–K) and the Early

Childhood Longitudinal Survey-Birth

Cohort (ECLS–B), both ongoing projects

of the National Center for Education

Statistics within OERI, offer additional

insight into how to measure family,

school, and individual variables using a

set of measures that overlap

substantially with the FACES measures.

The FACES measures will form the core

set of indicators used in PCER funded

projects.

The outcomes of greatest interest to

PCER are those skills that are most

highly predictive of academic success in

the early years of elementary school and

that are most amenable to influence by

factors within the realm of classroom

curricula and practice. These outcomes

include language development, prereading and pre-math abilities,

cognition, general knowledge, and

social competence.

The curricula of primary interest to

PCER are those with sufficient

standardized training procedures and

published curriculum materials to

support implementation of the

curriculum by entities other than and at

a distance from the curriculum

developers. In addition, the curricula of

interest to PCER are those that focus on

the child outcomes described above,

and those with instructional approaches

that find support in the scientific

literature on learning and instruction.

These will be existing curricula that are

already in use in a number of sites.

PCER is not intended to support the

development of new curricula; that will

be the focus of other programs of

research to be sponsored by the

Interagency Task Force.

Program Description

Grantees will coordinate with a

national evaluation contractor (to be

funded separately by OERI) to ensure

that evaluations carried out in different

locations follow consistent protocols

and use a core set of comparable

measures. The national contractor will

be responsible for collecting pre- and

post-intervention data and kindergarten

and first grade follow-up data on

children and classrooms, and for

analysis and reporting of these data

across program sites. This type of

centralized data coordination

mechanism has been found to be

important in maximizing the systematic

collection of cross-site knowledge

obtained from multiple research

projects. The cross-site data will be

returned to applicants in a timely

manner to serve as a basis for local

analyses (as part of any complementary

research), as well as eventually made

available in public use datasets.

Additional local measures and data

analysis of implementation and

outcomes may be carried out by the

applicants as part of complementary

research projects (described

subsequently) using program funds.

This arrangement allows applicants to

consider more intensive data collection

approaches to augment the available

core measures. Cooperative agreement

budgets should include costs of data

collection for local measures, assuming

a common core of data to be provided

by the external data collection center

without cost to the grantee.

The core set of evaluation data

collected by the national contractor will

utilize FACES instruments to measure

both classroom and family

characteristics and practices, and child

outcomes. Children, parents and

preschool staff participate in data

collection. In addition, the preschool

classrooms are assessed by outside

observers. The FACES instruments

cover a range of areas. The primary

focus is on child outcomes, including

cognitive outcomes assessed using

standard instruments such as the

Woodcock-Johnson Letter Word

Identification, and socio-emotional

outcomes such as social skills ratings

completed by the teacher. For purposes

of calculating participant burden, the

current FACES child direct assessment

is completed in approximately 30

minutes per child. For a full listing of

the measures used in the 1997–2000

FACES study, please see http://

www2.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/hsb/

hsreac/faces/instruments.html.

Applicants must consider methods for

assessing the characteristics of the

preschool program(s), including those

programs that serve as controls. Such

methods could examine such factors as

allocation of time during the preschool

day, nature of interactions between

children and teacher, and fidelity of the

curriculum implementation.

Applicants may also propose

complementary research studies to

further our knowledge of the

mechanisms by which curricula support

children’s learning, including the

65084 Federal Register / Vol. 66, No. 242 / Monday, December 17, 2001 / Notices

development of new instruments to

measure processes related to the effects

of curriculum and instruction on

learning and development in young

children. The complementary research

may address a range of issues related

broadly to curriculum effectiveness

such as the impact of curriculum

implementation on preschool staff, the

influence of individual differences in

children on program impact, the

development of instrumentation, or

other related topics.

The complementary research studies

are intended to supplement,

complement and enrich the core

evaluation. Investigators will have an

opportunity to explore mediating events

or the theoretical pathways that explain

the results that are obtained in the

evaluation. In addition, complementary

research provides an opportunity to

identify outcomes that, because of data

constraints, are not explored in the core

evaluation or are specific to an

individual site. It also expands the

possibilities for multiple measures of

the same construct, and for the

development of new measures.

Two areas of complementary research

are of particular interest:

(1) Studies that address how

individual or background differences in

children interact with the curriculum to

influence developmental outcomes.

Such studies would address the

question, for which children under

which conditions is the curriculum

most successful?

(2) Studies that compare different

versions of the curriculum or different

approaches to implementation in order

to identify key features of the

curriculum and approaches that might

improve effectiveness and ease of

implementation. Such studies would

address the question, under what

circumstances does the curriculum

achieve the greatest impact?

Specific complementary research

questions might include:

Individual differences: How are age,

gender, language, disability, and other

key child characteristics, as well as

cultural issues, addressed? How do

family characteristics interact with the

child’s preschool experience to

influence school readiness? To what

populations are evaluation results likely

to be generalizable? For which children

is the curriculum most effective/least

effective and why?

Replication/dissemination: What

variations in context, target populations,

and program delivery might affect

implementation in other sites, and how

might they affect the outcomes of the

curriculum? To what extent does the

curriculum have to be modified to adapt

to local conditions? What are the key

elements that have to be sustained to

maintain effectiveness of the

curriculum?

Classroom, program, and community

context: What are the structures and

supports necessary to implement the

curriculum? What are the key activities

that are conducted to include or gain

support from community stakeholders

and collaborators, with program

administrators and policy councils, with

classroom teachers and other staff, with

parents of children in the classrooms?

What are the contextual variables that

might influence how the curriculum is

implemented: e.g., culture,

neighborhood characteristics,

organizational climate, level of poverty

in the community, teacher backgrounds,

education, motivation, skills and

attitudes, levels of support (financial

and otherwise), competing priorities

within a program or classroom,

management and organizational

structures? What are the relationships

among the individuals who are

stakeholders and/or participants in the

curriculum?

Grantees will be required to propose

a research and evaluation work plan

that will be negotiated between the

applicant and OERI and updated on a

yearly basis. The work plan proposed by

the applicant will include details of

how the evaluation will be

implemented, e.g., the number of

classrooms, their characteristics, their

existing approach, how training will be

provided, how randomization will

occur, how informed consent will be

obtained. A work plan is also necessary

for the complementary research, if such

research is proposed by the applicant.

The evaluation portion of each PCER’s

proposed work plan will be reviewed by

OERI and the national evaluation

contractor before the final evaluation

plan is approved.

Time Frame

PCER projects will be funded for up

to a four-year period. Evaluation designs

should include both short term and long

term outcomes. Initial results are

expected at the end of the first year of

curriculum implementation. Long term

outcomes should include follow-up into

kindergarten and first grade. Applicants

should plan for an implementation in

pre-K classrooms in year 1, follow-up

into kindergarten in year 2, follow-up

into first grade in year 3, and

completion of data analysis and reports

in year four. Complementary research

designs could involve continued pre-K

implementations and ongoing research

in the pre-K setting for some or all years

of the grant, while children in the first

cohort are being followed up into first

grade.

In the event that a PCER project does

not generate meaningful differences

between intervention and control

classrooms in terms of children’s

outcomes at the end of year 1, and when

this lack of effect appears to be

attributable to unforeseen and

remediable problems in

implementation, grantees will be given

a second year of funding to repeat a preK implementation of their selected

curriculum. When curriculum effects on

children’s outcomes are not obtained at

the end of the pre-K year, and this lack

of effect appears to be a valid indicator

of program ineffectiveness, grantees will

be encouraged to implement and

evaluate curricula that have proven

effective as deployed by other grantees.

Type of Awards

OERI will use a cooperative

agreement mechanism that allows

substantial Federal involvement in the

activities undertaken with Federal

financial support. Details of the

responsibilities, relationships and

governance of the cooperative

agreement will be elaborated in the

terms and conditions of the award. The

specific responsibilities of the Federal

staff and project staff will be identified

and agreed upon prior to the award of

each cooperative agreement.

Priority

This competition focuses on projects

designed to meet the following absolute

priority. Under 34 CFR 75.105(c)(3) we

consider only applications that meet

this priority.

Absolute Priority

The preschool curriculum evaluation

research grants are designed to

determine through a randomized

clinical trial whether one or more

curricula produce educationally

meaningful effects on children’s

outcomes. Each grantee must implement

one or more identified pre-K curricula,

including attention to fidelity of the

curriculum implementation; and

coordinate with a national contractor

the assessment of children and

classrooms in the fall and spring of the

pre-K year, and in the spring of the

kindergarten and first grade year.

Specifically, successful applicants

must:

(1) Obtain agreement of a sufficient

number of preschool sites to participate

in the study;

(2) Obtain agreement of the

cooperating sites to random assignment

of children or classrooms to the

Federal Register / Vol. 66, No. 242 / Monday, December 17, 2001 / Notices 65085

curriculum being evaluated versus one

or more comparison approaches;

(3) Obtain informed consent of

parents of children participating in the

study, and all teachers and other

administrators from whom data will be

collected;

(4) Provide all necessary materials

and professional development to

teachers and staff to implement the

curriculum to be evaluated in the

intervention classrooms;

(5) Make all on-site arrangements

necessary for the national contractor to

conduct assessments of participating

children and classrooms;

(6) Obtain parent and teacher

interview data; and

(7) Provide an on-site coordinator to

manage all aspects of data collection,

curriculum implementation, and

interaction with the national contractor.

Complementary research projects may

be embedded within the evaluation

design or include additional data

collection activities. However, activities

related to the complementary research

must not compromise the core

evaluation responsibilities and are not

required in order to receive funding.

Applicants who are research

organizations are free to involve

curriculum developers or distributors in

the project as they think best, from

having the curriculum developers as full

partners in their proposals to utilizing

off-the-shelf curriculum materials

without involvement of the developer or

publisher. Involvement of the

curriculum developer or distributor

must not jeopardize the objectivity of

the evaluation and must not involve a

level of professional training or support

for the curriculum that rises above that

available to ordinary adopters of the

curriculum. Applicants who are not

research organizations will need to

obtain the services of at least one

consultant who is an established

researcher and who has committed

enough time to the project to assure the

integrity of the local evaluation and to

participate in all required meetings.

Applicants who are commercial

curriculum developers should indicate

in the budget summary the value of any

nonfederal resources that will be

devoted to the research project, such as

their curriculum products.

Applicants must employ random

assignment in the evaluation design.

Preschool program(s) that are to be the

sites for curriculum implementation

must agree to cooperate fully with the

random assignment as a condition for

the applicant to receive an award under

this announcement. In order to facilitate

random assignment, applicants are

encouraged to consider the use of

incentives for schools and families.

These may include: Compensation for

additional preschool staff time required

to cooperate with the research effort;

funding for a new classroom; provision

of additional resources to enable a

program to conduct new activities;

securing vehicles for transportation;

stipends to families, etc.

In proposing a curriculum for

evaluation and in the evaluation design,

applicants should consider the

following questions:

(1) What scientific research supports

the use of this particular curriculum to

improve school readiness or other

identified outcomes?

(2) What levels of staff qualifications

are required?

(3) What training and materials are

needed?

(4) What are the costs of the

curriculum in terms of materials and

professional training and support?

(5) How is classroom or program

practice to be affected?

(6) How will fidelity of the

curriculum be maintained over the

program year?

(7) What are possible program staff or

family barriers to acceptance?

Applicants need to pay special

attention to the nature of the curriculum

or approach that will be used in control

classrooms. Successful applicants for

this initial round of PCER awards are

not expected to compare different wellarticulated well-implemented preschool

curricula, though such applications are

not discouraged. Rather, we expect the

typical applicant to propose to

implement a well articulated, wellimplemented curriculum in preschools

in which the prevailing approach is a

home grown, garden variety, unlabeled

preschool experience that is short on

specific instructional goals and that

lacks a detailed curriculum. That

existing practice would continue in the

classrooms randomized into the control

condition. Applicants who propose a

control condition in which the

curriculum is one that might well be

proposed as the intervention condition

by another applicant should provide a

convincing rationale for their

intervention being likely to improve

children’s outcomes compared with the

known effects of the curriculum used in

the control condition. In this regard and

for all the projects, the ethics of random

assignment require a reasonable

assumption that children in the

intervention classrooms will experience

neutral to positive outcomes compared

with children in the control classrooms,

rather than negative outcomes.

Because children who are most

unprepared for entry into school are

found disproportionately among lowincome households, and because

variations in the quality of preschool

programs appear to have their greatest

effects among such children, applicants

must either focus on preschools that

serve children from low-income

backgrounds or assure that such

children are present in significant

numbers within the preschool

classrooms that are sampled.

Applicants will follow children who

participate in studies of PCER curricula

that generate educationally meaningful

effects at the end of the pre-K year into

kindergarten and first grade. Assessment

of children at follow-up in both the

intervention and control conditions will

be the responsibility of the national

contractor. However, all arrangements to

allow such assessments to occur,

including obtaining parent permission

and negotiating access to children for

testing in their schools, will be the

responsibility of the successful

applicant. Applicants must address how

they will provide access to children for

follow-up testing.

Applicants must be able to guarantee

access to a minimum of 10 classrooms

with a total of 150 children. Children

included must be in the age range such

that they would be eligible for entrance

into public kindergarten in the

following year. In addition, the

evaluation design must include

attention to the following:

(1) Description of the control

condition and the intervention

condition(s).

(2) Explanation of procedures for

random assignment and discussion of

procedures for tracking fidelity to the

assignment and potential sources of

contamination.

(3) Logic of sampling so as to capture,

to the degree possible, diversity in the

preschool population studied. Core

variables to consider for capturing

diversity include: race, ethnicity/

language status; household income;

parental education.

(4) Discussion of possible variations

in the structure of the participating

preschool program(s) (part-day or full

day, public or private, profit or nonprofit, etc.) and how these variations

will be taken into consideration in the

evaluation design.

Applicants must provide a letter of

cooperation from participating

preschool programs for the purposes of

conducting the research, with the

responsibilities of the preschool

program clearly indicated and accepted

in the letter of cooperation. The

applicant must be willing to work with

the national evaluation contractor for

the collection of cross-site data, in

65086 Federal Register / Vol. 66, No. 242 / Monday, December 17, 2001 / Notices

coordination with any local data

collection activities. The principal

investigator must agree to attend up to

four meetings each year of the grantees,

contractor, and Federal staff. The budget

should reflect travel funds for such

purposes.

Waiver of Proposed Rulemaking

Under the Administrative Procedure

Act (5 U.S.C. 553) the Department

generally offers interested parties the

opportunity to comment on proposed

regulations. However, in order to make

timely grant awards in FY 2002, the

Secretary has decided to issue this

application notice without first

publishing a proposed priority for

public comment. These regulations will

apply to the FY 2002 grant competition

only. The Secretary takes this action

under section 437(d)(1) of the General

Education Provisions Act.

OERI is conducting its first grant

competition under the national research

institutes authority for the purpose of

funding projects that will implement

rigorous evaluations of classroom

curricula currently in use for the pre-K

years (20 U.S.C. 6031). This new

program of research is intended to

address the critical question of which

curricula produce or contribute to

educationally meaningful outcomes for

children of this age. As noted earlier,

the evidence that would allow informed

choices of classroom curricula for early

childhood programs is weak or nonexistent. Thus, for the first time, OERI

is soliciting applications that will

address the lack of rigorous, systematic

study and evaluation of existing

curricula.

In a separate Federal Register notice

to be published in the near future, the

Assistant Secretary will ask for public

comment on the priority for the purpose

of designing and conducting future

grant competitions for this research.

FOR APPLICATIONS AND FURTHER

INFORMATION CONTACT: Heidi

Schweingruber, U.S. Department of

Education, 555 New Jersey Avenue,

room 602–O, Washington, DC 20208–

5501. Telephone: (202) 219–2040 or via

Internet: Heidi.Schweingruber@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 APPLICATIONS AND

FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT.

Individuals with disabilities may

obtain a copy of the application package

in an alternative format by contacting

Heidi Schweingruber. However, the

Department is not able to reproduce in

an alternative format the standard forms

included in the application package.

Pilot Project for Electronic Submission

of Applications

In FY 2002, the U.S. Department of

Education is continuing to expand its

pilot project of electronic submission of

applications to include additional

formula grant programs and additional

discretionary grant competitions. The

Preschool Curriculum Evaluation

Research Grant Program (CFDA 84.305J)

is one of the programs included in the

pilot project. If you are an applicant

under the PCER program, you may

submit your application to us in either

electronic or paper format.

The pilot project involves the use of

the Electronic Grant Application System

(e-APPLICATION, formerly e-GAPS)

portion of the Grant Administration and

Payment System (GAPS). We request

your participation in this pilot project.

We shall continue to evaluate its

success and solicit suggestions for

improvement.

If you participate in this eAPPLICATION pilot, please note the

following:

• Your participation is voluntary.

• You will not receive any additional

point value or penalty because you

submit a grant application in electronic

or paper format.

• You can submit all documents

electronically, including the

Application for Federal Assistance (ED

424), Budget Information—NonConstruction Programs (ED 524), and all

necessary assurances and certifications.

• Within three working days of

submitting your electronic application,

fax a signed copy of the Application for

Federal Assistance (ED 424) to the

Application Control Center after

following these steps:

1. Print ED 424 from the eAPPLICATION system.

2. Make sure that the institution’s

Authorizing Representative signs this

form.

3. Before faxing this form, submit

your electronic application via the eAPPLICATION system. You will receive

an automatic acknowledgement, which

will include a PR/Award number (an

identifying number unique to your

application).

4. Place the PR/Award number in the

upper right hand corner of ED 424.

5. Fax ED 424 to the Application

Control Center at (202) 260–1349.

We may request that you give us

original signatures on all other forms at

a later date.

You may access the electronic grant

application for the PCER Program at:

http://e-grants.ed.gov.

Due to software upgrades, it is

anticipated that the e-Application

software will be unavailable for several

days in mid-January. The tentative dates

for this system down time are January

11–21, 2002. Please check this site for

future updates on system availability.

We have included additional

information about the e-APPLICATION

pilot project (see Parity Guidelines

between Paper and Electronic

Applications) in the application

package.

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.

Dated: December 13, 2001.

Grover J. Whitehurst,

Assistant Secretary for Educational, Research

and Improvement.

[FR Doc. 01–31127 Filed 12–14–01; 8:45 am]

BILLING CODE 4000–01–U