Sneak Preview: ED Proposes Widespread Amendments to EDGAR
(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article.) The Department of Education (ED) recently proposed to amend its Education Department General Administrative Regulations (EDGAR) (34 C.F.R. Parts 75-77, 79 and 299) to better align them with other departmental regulations and procedures. Among the potential changes, which, once final, would be the first major updates to EDGAR in more than 10 years, are provisions enabling the agency to require grant applicants to submit logic models, and those enabling ED to require grant recipients to obtain an independent evaluation of their performance or provide a peer-reviewed scholarly publication as part of the grant award.
Stakeholders may submit comments to the proposed rule via Regulations.gov by Feb. 26, referring to Docket ID ED–2023–OPEPD–0110. ED notes that one of its goals in issuing the proposal is to better support continuous improvement (i.e., encouraging grantees to use research, data, community and related engagement, and other feedback to periodically review and improve their project plans to best advance their programmatic objectives). Therefore, it particularly seeks comments on how the proposed amendments could best advance this goal of continuous improvement. It also requests specific comments on whether the proposal better clarifies the award selection process.
“We have reviewed EDGAR, evaluated it for provisions that, over time, have become outdated, unnecessary or inconsistent with other ED regulations, and identified ways in which EDGAR could be updated, streamlined and otherwise improved,” the agency explains in the proposed rule. “Many of the adjustments would support ED, its grantees, or both, in selecting high-quality grantees and to support those grantees in ensuring the effectiveness and continuous improvement of their projects.”
One of the key amendments within the proposal is to add a new provision under 34 C.F.R. §75.590, which currently describes what grantees must provide to ED regarding performance reporting and evaluation of their projects. The proposed provision aims to improve public access to research and performance evaluations related to ED-funded projects by allowing ED to require a grantee under an award competition to do one or more of the following: (1) obtain an independent evaluation of its performance; (2) make public any results of the independent evaluation; (3) ensure that the data from the independent evaluation are made available to third-party researchers consistent with applicable privacy requirements; (4) submit the final evaluation to the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), which is administered by the Institute of Education Sciences; or (5) submit the final performance report under the grant to ERIC. An “independent evaluation” is an evaluation of a project component that is designed and carried out independently of, but in coordination with, the entities that develop or implement the project component.
(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
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