USA Secretary DeVos Announces New Funding to Accelerate Education Innovation and Empower Teachers with Professional Development Options

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos today announced $185 million in new grant funding for 28 school districts, institutions of higher education and nonprofit organizations across the United States as part of the Education Innovation and Research (EIR) program. These new grant awards will accelerate locally-driven innovation and improve academic achievement for high-needs students around the country.

This year’s funding supports a new, groundbreaking effort to empower teachers to personalize their professional development, rather than have it imposed on them by their state or school district. More than $72 million in new funding will help develop systems to enable teachers to select professional learning options that meet their personal development needs, without cost to the teachers and beyond the one-size-fits-all training typically offered by the school system.

“I have heard clearly from classroom teachers from around the country: teacher professional development is broken, and teachers know how to fix it,” said Secretary DeVos. “I am encouraged that these new grants will be used to empower teachers to choose their own professional learning and recognize that teachers should have the ability to choose the right direction for their professional growth. When you empower teachers to do what they know is best, teachers benefit—and so do students.”

In addition to promoting teacher empowerment, the 28 awards help realize other key Administration priorities, including:

• over $79 million to grants serving rural areas,
• over $66 million to grants focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education (including computer science), and
• over $77 million to grants supporting Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) projects.

The EIR program is authorized under Section 4611 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Its purpose is to create, develop, implement, replicate, or take to scale entrepreneurial, evidence-based innovation to improve student achievement. As with all the Department of Education’s grant competitions, applications undergo a blind evaluation by a panel of independent peer reviewers, and only the highest-scoring applications are funded. For additional information about the EIR competition, please visit oese.ed.gov.

A complete list of awardees is below: