[Federal Register Volume 66, Number 73 (Monday, April 16, 2001)]
[Notices]
[Pages 19674-19678]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 01-9294]



[[Page 19673]]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Part III





Department of Education





-----------------------------------------------------------------------



Final Requirements for Fiscal Year (FY) 2001 Competitions Under the 
Transition to Teaching Program; Notice

  Federal Register / Vol. 66, No. 73 / Monday, April 16, 2001 / 
Notices  

[[Page 19674]]


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

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 
[email protected] 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.

[[Page 19675]]

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)

[[Page 19676]]

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,

[[Page 19677]]

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