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US Department of Ed grant priorities include OER

The US Department of Education has issued a notice of the Secretary’s priorities for discretionary grants, which mentions OER as a priority. The summary states:

“The Secretary of Education proposes priorities that the Department of Education (Department) may use for any appropriate discretionary grant program in fiscal year (FY) 2011 and future years. We take this action to focus Federal financial assistance on expanding the number of programs and projects Department-wide that support activities in areas of greatest educational need. We are establishing these priorities on a Department-wide basis. This action will permit all offices in the Department to use, as appropriate for particular discretionary grant programs, one or more of these priorities in any discretionary grant competition. We also propose definitions of key terms used in these proposed priorities.”

Priority #13 mentions OER as one means of “building capacity for systematic continuous improvement” through increasing productivity.

Approval of this priority list means that production and use of OER as a component of a grant application to an appropriate Department of Education program could be given higher priority for funding than applications without this component.

There is a month long comment period on these proposed priorities. To read the document in its entirety, and for instructions on how to submit comments for consideration, please see the Federal Register at:

www.federalregister.gov/articles/2010/08/05/2010-19296/secretarys-priorities-for-discretionary-grant-programs#h-28