Education Department General Administrative Regulations and Related Regulatory Provisions

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION <CFR>34 CFR Parts 75, 76, 77, 79, and 299</CFR> <RIN>RIN 1875-AA14</RIN> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID ED-2023-OPEPD-0110]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Education Department General Administrative Regulations and Related Regulatory Provisions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, Department of Education. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Secretary of Education proposes to amend the Education Department General Administrative Regulations (EDGAR) and associated regulatory provisions to update the regulations and better align them with other U.S. Department of Education (Department) regulations and procedures. A brief summary of the proposed rule is available on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> in the docket for the rulemaking. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We must receive your comments on or before February 26, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments must be submitted electronically via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> However, if you require an accommodation or cannot otherwise submit your comments via <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov,</E> please contact the program contact person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . The Department will not accept comments submitted after the comment period closes. To ensure that we do not receive duplicate copies, please submit your comments only once. In addition, please include the Docket ID at the top of your comments. Information on using <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> , including instructions for accessing agency documents, submitting comments, and viewing the docket, is available on the site under “FAQ.” <E T="03">Note:</E> The Department's policy is generally to make comments received from members of the public available for public viewing in their entirety at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> Therefore, commenters should be careful to include in their comments only information that they wish to make publicly available. Commenters should not include in their comments any information that identifies other individuals or that permits readers to identify other individuals. The Department will not make comments that contain personally identifiable information about someone other than the commenter publicly available on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> for privacy reasons. Therefore, commenters should be careful to include in their comments only information that they wish to make publicly available. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kelly Terpak, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW, Room 4C212, Washington, DC 20202. Telephone: (202) 245-6776. Email: <E T="03">EDGAR@ed.gov.</E> If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability and wish to access telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Executive Summary</HD> <E T="03">Purpose of this Regulatory Action:</E> The last major update to EDGAR was in 2013. Given that EDGAR serves as the foundational set of regulations for the Department, we have reviewed EDGAR, evaluated it for provisions that, over time, have become outdated, unnecessary, or inconsistent with other Department regulations, and identified ways in which EDGAR could be updated, streamlined, and otherwise improved. Specifically, we propose to amend parts 75, 76, 77, 79, and 299 of title 34 of the Code of Federal Regulations. These changes are detailed in the Summary of Major Provisions of this Regulatory Action and the Significant Proposed Regulations section of this document. <E T="03">Summary of Major Provisions of this Regulatory Action:</E> As discussed in greater detail in the <E T="03">Significant Proposed Regulations</E> section of this document, the proposed regulations would: • Make technical updates to refer to up-to-date statutory authorities, remove outdated terminology, use consistent references, and eliminate obsolete cross-references. • Align EDGAR with updates in the most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). For example, updates to EDGAR would revise the tiers of evidence to incorporate and parallel those in the ESEA and would specify the procedures used to give special consideration to an application supported by evidence in § 75.226. • Clarify, streamline, and expand the selection criteria the Secretary may use to make discretionary awards under § 75.210. • Clarify procedural approaches, such as those related to making continuation awards under § 75.253, and exceptions to the typical process for new awards under § 75.219, such as if a grant application had been mishandled. • Improve public access to research and evaluation related to Department-funded projects by requiring, under §§ 75.590 and 75.623, that each grantee that prepares an evaluation or a peer-reviewed scholarly publication as part of the grant award or on the basis of grant-funded research make the final evaluation report or peer-reviewed scholarly publication available through the Education Resource Information Center (ERIC), which is current practice of the Department's Institute of Education Sciences (IES). • Expand and clarify flexibility for the Department in administering its grants programs, including by— ○ Providing the Department the option to require applicants under grant programs to include a logic model supporting their proposed project under § 75.112; ○ Replacing the definition in § 75.225 of “novice applicant” with a broader definition of “new potential grantee,” to allow additional flexibility to give special consideration to such grantees and increase equity in the applicant pool and recipients of Department funds; ○ Allowing the Department to require a grantee to conduct an independent evaluation of their project and make the results of such an evaluation public under § 75.590; ○ Defining “independent evaluation” under § 77.1(c); ○ Clarifying under § 76.50 that, where not prohibited by law, regulation, or the terms and conditions of the grant award, States have subgranting authority; ○ Allowing States flexibility under § 76.140 to adopt a process for amending a State plan that is distinct from the process used for initial approval; and ○ Clarifying the hearing and appeal process under § 76.401 for subgrants of State-administered formula grant programs, including by clarifying that aggrieved applicants must allege that a specific Federal or State statute or regulation has been violated. • Consolidating and clarifying regulations about participation of private school children, teachers, and other educational personnel in part 299. <E T="03">Costs and Benefits:</E> The Department believes that the benefits of this regulatory action would outweigh any associated costs to States, local educational agencies (LEAs), and other Department applicants and grantees. The proposed regulations would, in part, update terminology to align with applicable statutes and regulations. Many of the adjustments would support the Department, its grantees, or both, in selecting high-quality grantees and to support those grantees in ensuring the effectiveness and continuous improvement of their projects. These changes include, for example, adding potential selection criteria that apply only to programs that elect to use them, as announced in a notice inviting applications (NIA), and clarifying the language in selection criteria for applicants and peer reviewers. Please refer to the <E T="03">Regulatory Impact Analysis</E> section of this document for a more detailed discussion of costs and benefits. Consistent with Executive Order 12866, as amended most recently by Executive Order 14094, the Secretary has determined that this action is significant and, thus, is subject to review by the Office of Management and Budget. <E T="03">Incorporation by Reference:</E> Proposed § 75.616 incorporates by reference the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Standard 90.1. ASHRAE is included in the construction section focused on energy conservation and has been included in EDGAR for over 30 years. The ASHRAE standards are the industry leading standards and are relevant to the construction regulations in this section of EDGAR because grantees need to know the current standard with which they must comply. Standard 90.1 has been a benchmark for commercial building energy codes in the United States, and a key basis for codes and standards around the world, for almost half a century. This standard provides the minimum requirements for energy-efficient design of most sites and buildings, except low-rise residential buildings. It offers, in detail, the minimum energy efficiency requirements for design and construction of new sites and buildings and their systems, new portions of buildings and their systems, and new systems and equipment in existing buildings, as well as criteria for determining compliance with these requirements. It is an indispensable reference for engineers and other professionals involved in design of buildings, sites, and building systems. This standard is available to the public at <E T="03">www.ashrae.org/technical-resources/bookstore/standard-90-1.</E> Proposed § 77.1 incorporates by reference the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Procedures and Standards Handbook, Version 5.0. The purpose of the What Works Clearinghouse is to review and summarize the quality of existing research in educational programs, products, practices, and policies. We incorporate the Handbook, which provides a detailed description of the standards and procedures of the WWC, by reference. The Handbook ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 358k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━