Investing in Innovation Fund Awards

The U.S. Department of Education has announced forty-nine finalists for the $650 million Investing in Innovation (i3) fund.

Chosen from a pool of nearly 1,700 applicants, the finalists include four organizations — the KIPP Foundation, Ohio State University, the Success for All Foundation, and Teach for America — that are eligible for grants of up to $50 million to scale-up education programs with proven track records. Fifteen applicants are eligible for grants of up to $30 million to cultivate programs with emerging evidence of success, and thirty are eligible for grants of up to $5 million for the development of promising ideas. The finalists will focus on projects in two hundred and fifty communities in more than forty-two states and two territories.

Two Pennsylvania education organizations are receiving up to $30 million in federal Recovery Act funding to further develop promising innovations in education that will benefit Pennsylvania students, acting Education Secretary Thomas E. Gluck announced. Children’s Learning Initiative, based in Philadelphia, and ASSET Inc., based in Pittsburgh, were awarded highly-competitive “validation” grants through the i3 fund to build upon programs which have shown evidence of success.

Also among the 49 winning applications are seven other organizations that will partner with Pennsylvania school districts, nonprofit organizations and institutions of higher education. Some of the school districts and communities that will benefit from these i3 funds include Easton, Homestead, Reading, Bethlehem, Carnegie, East Stroudsburg, Wrightsville, Erie City SD, Philadelphia and Harrisburg City SD. For additional information on the i3 funds and descriptions of winner initiatives, visit http://www2.ed.gov/programs/innovation/index.html