[Federal Register: April 16, 2001 (Volume 66, Number 73)]
[Notices]
[Page 19673-19678]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr16ap01-132]
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Part III
Department of Education
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Final Requirements for Fiscal Year (FY) 2001 Competitions Under the
Transition to Teaching Program; Notice
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DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
[CFDA No: 84.350]
Final Requirements for Fiscal Year (FY) 2001 Competitions Under
the Transition to Teaching Program
AGENCY: Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Department of
Education.
ACTION: Notice of final requirements for fiscal year (FY) 2001
competitions under the Transition to Teaching program.
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SUMMARY: We announce final requirements to govern the initial grant
competition and FY 2001 awards under the new Transition to Teaching
program. The program is funded in the Department's FY 2001
appropriation under Title II, part A, of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act. These requirements are needed to promote a fair and
appropriate grants competition, and to ensure that all projects will be
conducted consistent with the purposes of the program.
DATES: These requirements are effective May 16, 2001.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Frances Yvonne Hicks, School
Improvement Programs, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, 400
Maryland Ave. SW, Room 3E224, Washington, DC 20202-6140: Telephone:
(202) 260-0964. Inquiries also may be sent by e-mail to: transition to
teaching@ed.gov or by FAX to: (202) 205-5630. 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 contact person listed in the preceding
paragraph.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Nation faces a severe shortage of
qualified teachers. America's schools will need to hire 2.2 million
teachers over the next ten years, and if the Nation is to achieve its
education goals, they will need to be the most talented and qualified
generation of teachers ever.
The need to recruit talented Americans of all ages into the
teaching profession, and particularly those who already have content-
area expertise, is self-evident. Nationally, nearly 13 percent of
teachers of academic subjects have neither an undergraduate major nor a
minor in their main assignment fields, and the problem is even more
severe in high-poverty schools. Many schools--particularly those in
high-poverty areas--face severe teacher shortages, particularly in
high-need fields such as mathematics, science, foreign languages,
bilingual education, reading, and special education. See, e.g., U.S.
Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics,
``America's Teachers: Profile of a Profession, 1993-94'' (1997). In
mathematics and science, the need for better-prepared teachers is
particularly acute. High attrition rates further complicate the
challenge of providing all of America's students with high-quality
teachers. As school enrollments continue to grow and retirements from
the current teacher force increase, the Nation's teacher recruitment
and preparation challenges will grow more daunting.
On December 21, 2000, the President signed into law the Department
of Education Appropriations Act, a component of the Consolidated
Appropriations Act 2001, P.L. 106-554. This Act provides $31 million
for competitive grants to encourage and help individuals in two
important and largely untapped groups to become licensed and successful
teachers: (1) Mid-career professionals with work experience in high-
need areas, such as engineers and scientists, corporate professionals,
and returning Peace Corps volunteers, and (2) recent college graduates
with outstanding academic records but without a baccalaureate in
education. Under this program, grantees will--
Recruit individuals in one or both of these groups to
become teachers in areas in which specific local educational agencies
(LEAs) face critical shortages (for instance in such fields as
mathematics, science, foreign languages, bilingual education, reading,
and special education);
Provide these individuals intensive short-term guidance
and personal support as they make their career moves, as well as
training in areas such as pedagogy and classroom management that will
enable them to begin teaching as soon as possible the subjects in which
they are qualified to teach;
Work with the specific LEAs (where the grantee is not
itself an LEA) to ensure that these individuals are hired as teachers
in schools that need them;
Help these individuals to (1) complete high-quality
training in pedagogy, classroom management, and other requirements of
licensure or certification (in State- or LEA-approved alternative
routes, where applicable) in the State in which they will teach, and
(2) pass any assessment the State (or LEA) requires for a teaching
license or certification; and
Ensure that these individuals receive special high-quality
support during at least their first two years of teaching, through such
activities as mentoring, co-teaching with experienced teachers, and
observation and consultation with experienced teachers, in order to
help ensure that they are successful in their new teaching careers.
To encourage those recruited into the program to become qualified
teachers, grantees also (1) will use program funds both to pay expenses
related to becoming a licensed or certified teacher, and (2) may use
program funds to provide these individuals, as may be needed to recruit
them into teaching, a financial stipend or incentive of up to $5,000
per year for up to two years.
The Transition to Teaching program provides an historic opportunity
to advance two important objectives. First, the program will help
participating schools and school districts to address their teacher
shortages, particularly those in high-need areas and subjects. It will
do so by enabling them to quickly hire individuals who, while currently
working in non-teaching occupations, want to make career moves into
teaching and already have content knowledge, experience, and talents
that likely would help them to become good teachers. Second, the
activities that grantees will conduct will likely help to stimulate
other talented non-teaching professionals to take advantage of State
alternative routes to teacher licensure and certification, and help
other LEAs to understand how they can attract similar individuals into
teaching. In this regard, once the grants provided under this program
are completed, the Department intends to determine which approaches
have been most successful in addressing the teaching shortages of
participating LEAs, and widely disseminate information about these
approaches to the public at large.
A notice inviting applications for grants under the Transition to
Teaching program is published elsewhere in this edition of the Federal
Register. That notice also explains how the public may obtain an
application package. This package explains how to apply for a grant,
information that applicants must provide, suggestions for designing a
quality application, and the criteria in the Education Department
General Administrative Regulations (EDGAR) the Department will use to
select those to receive grant awards.
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Rules Applicable to This Program for the FY 2001 Competition
In calling for this program in the conference report accompanying
the Department's FY 2001 Appropriations Act, Congress said that the
purpose of this program is to provide grants--
``for local educational agencies, State educational agencies,
educational service agencies, or nonprofit agencies and organizations,
including organizations with expertise in teacher recruitment, or
partnerships comprised of these entities to recruit, prepare, place and
support mid-career professionals from diverse fields who possess strong
subject matter skills to become teachers, particularly in high-need
fields such as mathematics, science, foreign languages, bilingual
education, reading, and special education; and to attract, recruit,
screen, select, train, place and provide financial incentives to recent
college graduates with outstanding academic records and a baccalaureate
in a field other than education to become fully qualified teachers
through nontraditional routes.''
See House (Conference) Report 106-1033 on H.R. 4577, page 182.
While this statement of purpose is clear, certain aspects of this
new grant program--such as how the Department can fairly evaluate the
relative quality of projects proposed by these very different kinds of
entities--need definition. Therefore, in order to administer the
program fairly and in a manner that is consistent with this statement
of purpose, the Department has established the following rules to
govern this competition and activities to be undertaken by those who
receive grant awards:
The Application Review Process
Given the variety of entities that may apply for grants under this
program, the Department expects the scope of proposed recruitment and
placement efforts to vary widely. For example, a nonprofit organization
might propose activities in communities throughout the nation, an SEA
might propose activities to be conducted on a statewide basis, and an
LEA might propose activities that would focus on its own teaching
needs. In order to evaluate fairly the relative merits of applications
proposing projects of such widely varied scope, applications will be
placed into and reviewed as part of one of three categories, depending
on whether the LEAs to benefit from the project are located (1) in more
than one State, (2) statewide or in more than one area of a State, or
(3) in a single area of a State. The anticipated average grant amounts
and other information regarding these three categories are more fully
explained in the notice inviting applications for new awards that is
published separately in this edition of the Federal Register.
Because of the variety of entities that may apply for grants under
this program, it is possible that an LEA may be the recipient of
services under both (1) its own application and (2) the application of
the SEA of the State in which the LEA is located or of an educational
service agency or nonprofit organization. In this event, should those
applications propose duplicative recruitment and placement activities,
the Department will offer the LEA a choice of receiving its own grant
award or participating in the other entity's project. In the event the
LEA chooses to receive its own award, the Department will adjust the
other entity's grant award accordingly.
Information That Must Be Included in a Project Application
The success of this program in enhancing the quality of the
Nation's teaching force depends on the quality of activities grantees
undertake. In particular, it depends on: (1) How well grantees, in
response to the teacher shortage needs of participating LEAs, recruit
and prepare mid-career professionals with relevant work experience, and
recent college graduates with outstanding academic records to become
qualified teachers, (2) the extent to which these individuals become
employed as teachers in the LEAs and schools that most need them, and
(3) the kinds of special support they receive during their first years
of teaching. These, in turn, depend on the commitment of the applicant
and its partners to ensure that the LEA or LEAs that participate in the
project will benefit from the new qualified teachers the project will
produce.
How applicants propose to accomplish the objectives of this program
is left to their own judgment, ingenuity, and imagination. However, to
ensure that funded projects are of high quality and respond to the
teacher shortage needs of participating LEAs, all applications will
need, at minimum, to identify the following:
1. The critical teacher shortage needs that one or more LEAs have
identified (for instance in such fields as mathematics, science,
foreign languages, bilingual education, reading, and special
education), and the basis for the LEA's assessment of these needs
(e.g., numbers of teachers teaching without certification or out-of-
field, high teacher attrition, etc.).
2. The target group upon which the project would focus, i.e.,
either or both--
Career-changing professionals with work experience in the
relevant subject fields (along with any academic background that the
LEA or LEAs who would hire them may require), and
Recent college graduates with outstanding academic records
but without a baccalaureate in education.
3. For projects that recruit recent college graduates with
outstanding academic records, the applicant's criteria (e.g., minimum
grade-point average overall or in area of college major, inclusion in
top ``xx'' percent of the graduating class, receipt of academic honors,
etc.) for what constitutes an ``outstanding academic record.''
4. The estimated number of these individuals who will become
teachers through this project in each participating LEA.
5. The applicant's strategies for ensuring that, to the maximum
extent possible, those recruited into the program make teaching in the
participating LEA or LEAs their long-term career. In addressing this
issue, applicants must describe the proposed strategies with which they
will--
Identify and recruit the target group of individuals to
become teachers in participating LEAs (including the applicant's
strategy for ensuring that any recruitment costs--including costs that
may be needed for non-local travel--are reasonable and necessary); and
then ensure that these recruits--
Receive guidance and personal support needed to ease their
transitions from one career to another, as well as appropriate short-
term training in areas such as pedagogy and classroom management before
they begin teaching--which shall begin as quickly as possible and no
later than the beginning of the 2002-03 school year;
Complete high-quality training in pedagogy, supervised
teaching, and other requirements of licensure or certification of the
State (and, where applicable, the LEA) in which they will teach;
Become licensed or certified in the area(s) in which they
will teach through, where applicable, a State- (or LEA-) approved
alternative route to teacher certification or licensure that does not
require completion of a full course of study in a teacher preparation
program;
Teach only in subject areas in which they have prior
experience or sufficient academic background until they receive a
teaching license or certificate confirming they have met all State
(and, if applicable, LEA)
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requirements related to the subjects they will teach; and
Receive the special support they will need during at least
their first two years of teaching so that they are able to learn to
help the diverse groups of students who will be in their classrooms
achieve to high standards. This support will include activities such
as: mentoring, co-teaching with experienced teachers, observation and
consultation with experienced teachers, training in the use of
technology, and other sustained and high-quality professional
development tied to State and district standards and assessments.
6. The applicant's plans, as part of its overall strategy, for--
Paying the costs of required courses, State assessments
and other expenses related to project participants becoming licensed or
certified teachers, and
determining--
(a) The circumstances under which the applicant, in order to
implement the project successfully, would provide to each individual
recruited into the program a stipend or financial incentive of up to
$5,000 per year for up to two years;
(b) At what point(s) in the project period an individual would
receive the stipend or financial incentive; and
(c) The total amount of stipends or incentives the applicant
expects to provide out of program funds.
7. The State (or, where applicable, LEA) procedures under which
project participants would be certified or licensed including, where
available, those for any alternative routes to teacher certification or
licensure that the State (or LEA) provides.
8. If applicable, the ways in which the proposed project will help
further State and local efforts to establish alternative routes to
teacher certification or licensure.
9. The identities of any agencies and organizations that will work
with the applicant to implement project activities.
Applicants also will need to include an assurance that recruitment
and hiring efforts supported with program funds will expand existing
efforts that the applicants or the participating LEAs conduct.
Finally, applicants also will need to include a written statement
from the LEA or LEAs in which the project will focus--
Offering support for the project and a commitment to
employ all of the project's participants as soon as possible, but no
later than the beginning of the 2002-03 school year, provided that
they, in fact, have the subject-matter backgrounds and academic
training appropriate to the high-need subjects and fields they would
teach, and
Confirming that, should the applicant propose to use
program funds to provide stipends or financial incentives to a program
participant after he or she is hired as a teacher (or in the first year
of the project in another capacity), the LEA that would hire the
individual agrees with these plans.
Applications that do not contain the information identified in
items 1 through 9, above, and in the preceding paragraphs will be
considered incomplete and not be eligible for funding.
Limitation on Indirect Costs
The amount of indirect costs that a grantee or recipient may charge
to Transition to Teaching program funds is limited to (1) eight percent
of its direct cost base or (2) the amount determined through operation
of an approved negotiated indirect cost rate, whichever is less.
Section 75.562 of EDGAR already imposes this limitation on the
reimbursement of indirect costs that a grantee other than an agency of
a State or local government may charge on an educational training
grant. Section 75.562(a) acknowledges that educational training grants
typically have a large proportion of their funds available for direct
costs, since these grants largely implement previously developed
materials and methods, rather than ``support activities involving
research, development, and dissemination of new educational materials
and methods.'' This is likely to be true of the training, instruction,
and support activities that Transition to Teaching projects provide.
Moreover, while grantees receiving funds under the Transition to
Teaching program also must undertake recruitment and placement
activities, the thrust of the program is the training and support for
teaching candidates and new teachers of the kind described in
Sec. 75.562(a) of EDGAR. Hence, we believe that the Transition to
Teaching projects as a whole fit the category of ``educational training
grants.''
There is no reason to believe that LEAs, SEAs, or educational
service agencies merit a different measure. As noted above, Sec. 75.562
does not apply to LEAs and State agencies. We recognize the legitimacy
of their indirect costs which, absent other requirements, would be
limited only by negotiated indirect cost rate agreements that comport
with applicable Office of Management and Budget (OMB) cost principles,
Secs. 75.560-75.564, and the agency's own overall cost structure.
However, the best data available to the Department indicate that over
20 States have indirect cost rates of over 15 percent, and two States
have indirect cost rates of over 30 percent. Because the program does
not use a ``restricted indirect cost rate'' (see Sec. 75.564),
applicable LEA indirect cost rates may also be fairly high. If those
reviewing applications recommend these States or LEAs for award of
Transition to Teaching program grants, absent a similar limitation on
their indirect cost rates, very large amounts of the funds that
Congress appropriated for these Transition to Teaching projects would
support these agencies' overhead through indirect cost reimbursement
rather than the direct costs of activities designed to improve teacher
quality.
We believe that such a result is inconsistent with the purpose of
the Transition to Teaching program and the expectations that Congress
and the Nation have for its success. Therefore, given (1) the pivotal
significance of the Transition to Teaching program, (2) the national
need for this program to have a maximum impact on the quality and
quantity of highly-qualified new teachers, and (3) the fact that this
program is competitive, we have determined that it is appropriate to
establish a reasonable limitation on the indirect cost rate that any
grantee may charge to these educational training grants.
Still, certain activities that grantees must undertake, in
particular recruitment and placement of those recruited into the
program as teachers in participating LEAs, are not themselves
educational training activities. Even if we looked solely at these
activities we would require that, regardless of grantee or recipient, a
maximum eight-percent indirect cost rate should apply to the costs of
these activities as well. We do not believe that Transition to Teaching
program grantees or other recipients need to employ higher indirect
cost rates to fairly compensate themselves for the costs of their
recruitment and placement activities. Rather, since grantees may
reasonably undertake recruitment and placement activities as direct
costs of their projects, we believe that it is appropriate that all
grantees and recipients use the same cap--eight percent--on the
indirect cost rate they may use to calculate allowable indirect costs
charged to the program's recruitment and placement activities.
This requirement strikes a reasonable balance between the need to
focus as much funding as possible under the Transition to Teaching
program on direct services tied to identifying,
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hiring, training, and supporting new teachers from mid-career
professionals and recent college graduates, and the reality that, to do
so, recipients invariably must encounter some indirect costs. (It also
avoids the uncertainty and confusion that grantees would likely face in
apportioning the time of project officers and staff among activities
with different indirect cost rates.)
Therefore, so that all applicants are competing for and
administering projects under a common set of requirements, and to
ensure that the funds Congress appropriated for this program are used
to recruit, prepare, hire, and support new teachers rather than for
project overhead, the Department requires that each grantee and
recipient of Transition to Teaching program funds apply an indirect
cost rate of eight-percent or its approved negotiated rate, whichever
is less, in determining the indirect costs it may charge to program
funds.
Note: A grantee may not charge indirect costs to any funds that
it provides to individuals as stipends or financial incentives. See
section 75.564(c) of EDGAR.
Procedures To Govern Any Partial Termination of Grants
As explained in the section of this notice entitled ``Information
that Must Be Included in a Project Application,'' to be eligible for
funding an application must include, among other things, the estimated
number of individuals who will become teachers through this project in
each year of the grant. In the event that the actual number of
individuals recruited into the program who have become teachers is
significantly less than the number the grantee had estimated, the
amount of funding the grantee will need to pay for training and support
activities and for any needed stipends and other financial incentives
will be significantly less than the grantee had projected in its
approved application. Accordingly, should the Department find that the
actual number of teachers hired through a project is less than the
number the grantee had estimated, the remaining amount of the grantee's
award may be adjusted accordingly. Consistent with Secs. 74.61 and
80.43 of EDGAR, before taking any action, the Department will provide
the grantee notice and reasonable opportunity to show cause why an
adjustment of this kind should not be taken.
So that the Department may receive the information it needs to
determine how a grantee's recruitment and hiring efforts compare to the
level of recruitment and hiring proposed in the approved grant
application, each grantee must provide the Department with this
information as part of the annual performance report it submits as
required by section 75.590 of EDGAR.
The Government Performance and Results Act
The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) requires
all Federal programs to use performance indicators to measure their
quality and effectiveness. GPRA further requires that the Department
provide Annual Performance Plans to Congress that provide data on how
all of the programs are performing with respect to the program
performance indicators. Therefore, the Department submits an annual
plan to Congress that provides the most recent data on the Department's
five-year Strategic Plan, as well as the latest data on the performance
of each program with respect to the program indicators.
The Transition to Teaching program has a set of performance
objectives and indicators that appear in Part B in the application
package. All grantees must collect data and report to the Department on
their progress with respect to each of the performance indicators.
Waiver of Proposed Rulemaking
In accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C. 553),
it is the practice of the Department of Education to offer interested
parties the opportunity to comment on proposed rulemaking documents.
However, in order to make timely grant awards in FY 2001, the Secretary
has decided to issue these final regulations without first publishing
proposed regulations for public comment. These regulations will apply
to the FY 2001 grant competition only. The Secretary takes this action
under section 437(d)(1) of the General Education Provisions Act. Should
Congress fund the Transition to Teaching program in future years and
provide sufficient funding to permit a subsequent grant competition,
the Assistant Secretary will issue regulations to govern that
competition only after first publishing a notice of proposed rulemaking
and offering interested parties the opportunity to comment.
Regulatory Flexibility Act Certification
The Secretary certifies that these regulations would not have a
significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.
The small entities that would be affected by these regulations are
small LEAs, educational service agencies, nonprofit agencies and other
organizations that choose to participate in projects the Department
funds competitively under this program. However, the regulations would
not have a significant economic impact on any of these entities because
the regulations would not impose excessive regulatory burdens or
require unnecessary Federal supervision. The regulations would impose
minimal requirements to ensure the proper expenditure of program funds.
Paperwork Reduction Act Considerations
The procedures and requirements contained in this notice relate to
an application package that the Department has developed under the
Transition to Teaching program. The public may obtain copies of these
packages by calling or writing the individuals identified at the
beginning of this notice as the Department's contact, or through the
Department's website: http://www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/heatqp/index.html
As required by the Paperwork Reduction Act, OMB has approved the
use of these application packages under the following OMB control
number 1810-0635, expiration date April 30, 2004.
Intergovernmental Review
This program is subject to Executive Order 12372 and the
regulations in 34 CFR part 79. One of the objectives of the Executive
Order is to foster an intergovernmental partnership and a strengthened
federalism. The Executive Order relies on processes developed by State
and local governments for coordination and review of proposed Federal
financial assistance.
This document provides early notification of our specific plans and
actions for this program.
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:
www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister
To use PDF you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available
free at the previous site. If you have questions about using the 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
[[Page 19678]]
(Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance Number 84.350: Transition to
Teaching program)
Dated: April 10, 2001.
Thomas M. Corwin,
Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary,
Education.
[FR Doc. 01-9294 Filed 4-13-01; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4000-01-P