Education Department General Administrative Regulations and Related Regulatory Provisions

<RULE> 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> Final regulations. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Secretary of Education amends the Education Department General Administrative Regulations (EDGAR) and associated regulatory provisions to update, improve, and better align them with U.S. Department of Education (Department) implementing statutes and other regulations and procedures. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> These regulations are effective September 30, 2024. The incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in this final rule is approved by the Director of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> as of September 30, 2024. The incorporation by reference of the other material listed in this final rule was approved by the Director of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> as of July 31, 2017, and October 5, 2020. </EFFDATE> <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set of regulations for the Department, we have reviewed EDGAR, evaluated it for provisions that, over time, have become outdated, unnecessary, or inconsistent with other Department regulations, and identified ways in which EDGAR could be updated, streamlined, and otherwise improved.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 amend parts 75, 76, 77, 79, and 299 of title 34 of the Code of Federal Regulations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Major Provisions of This Regulatory Action</HD> The final EDGAR provisions: • Make technical updates to refer to up-to-date statutory authorities, remove outdated terminology, use consistent references, and eliminate obsolete cross-references.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 revise the tiers of evidence to incorporate and generally parallel those in the ESEA and 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 the 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 or other conceptual framework 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 to increase equity in the applicant pool and recipients of Department funds; ○ Allowing the Department to require a grantee to conduct an independent evaluation of its project and make the results of such an evaluation public under § 75.590; ○ Defining “independent evaluation” under § 77.1(c); ○ Clarifying for the first time that, under § 76.50, where not prohibited by law, regulation, or the terms and conditions of the grant award, State agencies 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. <E T="03">Costs and Benefits:</E> As further detailed in the <E T="03">Regulatory Impact Analysis</E> section, the benefits of these final regulations will outweigh any associated costs to States, local educational agencies (LEAs), and other Department applicants and grantees. The final regulations will, in part, update terminology to align with applicable statutes and regulations. Many of the adjustments will support the Department in selecting high-quality grantees and those grantees in ensuring the effectiveness and continuous improvement of their projects. These changes include, for example, adding 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. The Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has determined this to be a significant regulatory action under Executive Order 12866, as amended most recently by Executive Order 14094, and therefore has been subject to review by OIRA. <E T="03">Supplementary Information—General:</E> On January 11, 2024, the Secretary published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for these amendments in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (89 FR 1982). There are differences between some of the selection criteria and definitions proposed in the NPRM and those established in these final regulations, as discussed in the <E T="03">Analysis of Comments and Changes</E> section below. We recognize that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) updated the Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements (the Uniform Guidance) on April 22, 2024 (89 FR 30046). Many of the changes in EDGAR align with the goals behind the changes in the Uniform Guidance, and the Department will continue to review EDGAR, as needed, to ensure alignment with the Uniform Guidance. <E T="03">Incorporation by Reference:</E> Section 75.616 incorporates by reference the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Standard 90.1-2022. ASHRAE is included in the construction section focused on energy conservation and has been included in EDGAR for more than 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> and a read-only version is available at <E T="03">https://www.ashrae.org/technical-resources/standards-and-guidelines/read-only-versions-of-ashrae-standards</E> . This final rule also will remove outdated versions of the ASHRAE standard from § 75.616. Section 77.1 incorporates by reference the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Procedures and Standards Handbook, Version 5.0. The purpose of the WWC 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 is available to interested parties at <E T="03">https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Handbooks</E> . As the Handbook is available as a free download, it is reasonably available to the public. The Version 5.0 Handbook includes a new Chapter I, Overview of the What Works Clearinghouse and Its Procedures and Standards and aligns the flow of content with the study review process. Additionally, it no longer allows for topic-specific customization of the standards, aligns its effectiveness ratings with the evidence definitions in § 77.1(c), and describes other protocols for specific study designs. More details are available at <E T="03">http ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 344k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━