WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 — After the most heated grant competition in the agency's history, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) has selected 49 schools, districts and non-profit organizations to share in $650 million in Investing in Innovation, or i3, funds.

The winners, which were selected from more than 1,600 applicants — the largest applicant pool ever for an ED grant competition — have until Sept. 8 to secure a private sector commitment worth 20 percent of each grant. Otherwise, in the absence of a waiver, they risk losing federal funding.

"We're hopeful that amongst these 49, there are some phenomenal ideas that will ... be game changers for the entire country," ED Secretary Arne Duncan said during a conference call with reporters Friday. "That's how good we think some of these proposals are."

The grants fall into three broad categories:

*Scale Up — Four organizations — the Kipp Foundation, Ohio State University, the Success for All Foundation and Teach for America—won coveted "scale up" awards, worth up to $50 million each, for programs with a strong track record of success

*Validation — Fifteen groups — including George Mason University, the Smithsonian Institution, and School District No. 1 of Denver, Co. — won "validation" awards, worth up to $30 million, for programs with emerging evidence of success.

*Development — Thirty organizations, which include the American Federation of Teachers and several school districts — won up to $5 million in "development" grants for promising ideas.

Duncan stressed that along with some veteran reform groups, the winning applicants included several relative newcomers. "Many of the final applicants had never received a federal grant and had no capacity to deal with private funders," he said.

The i3 grants are geared towards innovative ideas in the areas of teacher effectiveness, low-performing schools, standards and assessments, and data systems. The i3 fund is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and theoretically a one-time event, but the Obama Administration has pushed for more i3 funding in its 2011 budget proposal and in its "blueprint" for reauthorizing No Child Left Behind. ED will also be holding a summit in November to highlight other promising applicants who were not among the winners

—Andrew Brownstein

For More Information

A full list of the winning applicants can be found at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/innovation/2010/i3hra-list.pdf

A summary of characteristics shared by the winning applicants can be found at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/innovation/2010/summary-i3hra.pdf