Late last week, the Department of Education announced its Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant program for 2018. This is the second program (first being the Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) program) which supports the Administration’s policy of dedicating $200 million to STEM and CS within DOEd.

The EIR program, which was established under the amended Elementary and Secondary Education Act, provides funding to, “create, develop, implement, replicate, or take to scale entrepreneurial, evidence-based, field-initiated innovations to improve student achievement and attainment for high-need students; and rigorously evaluate such innovations.” The program uses a three tier structure that links the amount of funding that an applicant receives to the quality of the evidence supporting the efficacy of the proposed project, with the expectation that projects that build this evidence will advance through EIR’s grant tiers: Early-phase, Mid-phase, and Expansion. Code.org has an excellent summary of the program with a list of priorities, both for the whole program and for each tier, along with eligibility requirements and deadlines for applications.

This is a new source of funds for the CS education community to compete in and it is a great sign of the community expanding visibility. The deadline to apply is May 9th.