Applicants for this program competition must use the government-wide website, grants.gov http://www.grants.gov, to apply. Please note that the Grants.gov site works differently than the U.S. Department of Education's e-Application System. We strongly encourage you to familiarize yourself with Grants.gov and strongly recommend that you register early and submit early.

If an applicant wishes to exercise the Exception to Electronic Submission Requirement, applicants must submit no later than two weeks before the application due date a statement to the Department requesting an exception to these requirements and explaining the grounds that prevent the applicant from using the Internet to submit your application.

If an applicant decides to mail the request for the Exception to Electronic Submission Requirement to the Department, it must be postmarked no later than two weeks before the application deadline date. For information about how to submit applications electronically, or by mail or hand delivery if you qualify for an exception to the electronic submission requirement, please refer to the original application notice published in the Federal Register.

Register Early: Grants.gov registration may take five or more days to complete. You must be fully registered to submit an application. Please follow the detailed Step-by-Step instructions on the Grants.gov Get Started page http://www.grants.gov/applicants/get_registered.jsp.

Submit Early: Do not wait until the last day to submit your application! To submit successfully, you must enter the DUNS number in the application that your organization used when it registered with the CCR.

The FY 2009 application for grants under the Even Start Indian Program is available to download.
PDF (515K)

For printed applications contact:
ED Pubs
P.O. Box 1398
Jessup, MD 20794-1398
Telephone: (877) 433-7827
(TDD) (877) 576-7734
ED Pubs Web site
E-mail: edpubs@inet.ed.gov

Or

Amber Sheker
400 Maryland Avenue, SW, 3E252
Washington, DC
20202-6200
Telephone: (202) 205-0653
E-mail: amber.sheker@ed.gov

APPLICATION DEADLINE:

Deadline for Transmittal of Applications under the Even Start Family Literacy Program for Indian Tribes and Tribal Organizations grant competition: May 4, 2009 (by 4:30:00 p.m., Washington, DC time).

All applicants must use the government-wide website, grants.gov, to apply. If an applicant wishes to exercise the Exception to Electronic Submission Requirement, applicants must submit no later than two weeks before the application due date a statement to the Department requesting an exception to these requirements and explaining the grounds that prevent the applicant from using the Internet to submit your application.

Federal Register Notice Inviting Applications for FY 2009 (March 9, 2009).

Online Resources

You may find the following resources helpful in preparing your application:

• Grantmaking at ED (August 2004)
• Guidance for the William F. Goodling Even Start Family Literacy Programs
  MS WORD (815K)

If you have any questions about the program after reviewing the application package, please contact Amber Sheker by telephone at (202) 205-0653, via e-mail at Amber.Sheker@ed.gov, or write directly to:
Amber Sheker
Early Childhood Reading
Academic Improvement and Teacher Quality Program (AITQ)
US Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW, 3E252
Washington D.C. 20202-6200

Workshops

We provided web-based workshops on the 2009 Tribal Even Start application using WebEx. You can view a recording of the presentation at the below link. If you need assistance, contact Amber Sheker at Amber.Sheker@ed.gov, or at (202) 205-0653.

Web-based technical assistance workshop for the 2009 Even Start for Indian tribes grant competition

https://windwalker.webex.com/windwalker/lsr.php?AT=pb &SP=TC&rID=21508522&act=pb&rKey=945ED32C4C5EDB54

Tribal Even Start grantees are required to report annually to the Secretary regarding the progress made towards addressing the purposes of the program. Specifically, grantees will be required to report on the following GPRA measures:

• Measure 1: The percentage of Tribal Even Start adults who do not have limited English Proficiency (LEP) who achieve significant learning gains in reading.
  
• Measure 2: The percentage of Tribal Even Start adults with limited English Proficiency (LEP) who achieve significant learning gains in reading/English Language acquisition.
  
• Measure 3: The percentage of Tribal Even Start adults with a high school completion goal who earn a high school diploma.
  
• Measure 4: The percentage of Tribal Even Start adults with the goal of General Equivalency Diploma (GED) attainment who earn a GED.
  
• Measure 5: The percentage of preschool-aged children participating in Tribal Even Start who achieve significant gains in oral language skills.
  
• Measures 6: The average number of letters Tribal Even Start preschool-aged children are able to identify.
  
• Measure 7: The percentage of preschool-aged children participating in Tribal Even Start who demonstrate age-appropriate oral language skills.

While grantees may select their own assessment instruments for use in reporting on these measures, this document provides some basic guidelines for selecting quality assessments.

1. For measures 1,2,5,6, and 7, the grantee should be able to demonstrate that the oral language assessment selected is:

• a. Valid for the subject and age range of students being tested. Validity is the extent to which the test measures what it was supposed to (e.g., reading aptitude, oral language skills). There are several types of validity including content, construct, and predictive validity. Evidence of validity is often available from the publisher of the assessment instrument.
  
• b. Reliable with regard to the consistency and repeatability of measurement. Several types of reliability are routinely established, including the internal consistency of an instrument (how well different items on an instrument measure the same construct) and test/retest reliability (the consistency of measurement at two different points in time). Evidence of reliability is often available from the publisher of the assessment instrument.

2. For assessments used to determine if an adult or child made a significant gain (for measures 1,2, and 5), the same assessment should be used for pre- and post-tests. For assessments that have different versions of the assessment (e.g., for different age ranges), the grantee should ensure data received from the pre-assessment can be compared to data received from the post-assessment to calculate a change in score. The test publisher can inform the grantee whether pre- and post-assessment data from different versions can be compared.

3. For assessments used to determine whether a child is demonstrating age-appropriate oral language skills (for measure 7), the assessment should have information about normative statistics for the instrument. This information is commonly referred to as “population norms” or “normed-referencing data” and is provided by the instrument’s author or publisher. Since young children’s skills can develop rapidly because of maturation, we recommend that assessments used for measure 7 have normed-referencing data available in 6-month or smaller age intervals. For example, an assessment provides the mean and standard deviation of the norm-referencing data for ages 48 to 53 months, 54 to 59 months, etc.

4. In addition to the characteristics described above, the evaluators for the National Evaluation of Early Reading First described some additional factors they considered when selecting assessments. This list of factors may be helpful to applicants as they select their assessment instruments.

• Time required to administer the instruments
  
• Training required for staff to administer the instruments
  
• Qualifications that examiners needed so that appropriate and adequate staff were trained and available
  
• Sensitivity of the measures to change as a result of the intervention
  
• Appropriateness of the measure for a diverse population including racial and ethnic minorities, language minorities, and economically disadvantaged children
  
• Costs of the measures for the sample sizes
  
• Comparability of the measures to other national evaluation studies (especially other current early literacy intervention studies)
  
• Psychometric qualities of the measures under consideration, including adequate reliability and validity, with minimal floor or ceiling effects for low-income preschool children
  
• Availability of a Spanish-language version of assessment
  

Russell Jackson, McCoy, Ann, Pistorino, Carol, Wilkinson, Anna, Burghardt, John, Clark, Melissa, Ross Christine, Schochet, Peter and Swank, Paul. National Evaluation of Early Reading First: Final Report, U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2007, p. 161.