Proposed Priority and Requirements-Innovative Rehabilitation Training Program

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION <CFR>34 CFR Chapter III</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID ED-2024-OSERS-0131]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Proposed Priority and Requirements—Innovative Rehabilitation Training Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Department of Education. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed priority and requirements. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Education (Department) proposes a priority and requirements under the Innovative Rehabilitation Training program, Assistance Listing Number 84.263G. The Department may use the proposed priority and requirements for competitions in fiscal year (FY) 2025 and later years. We take this action to promote the development of innovative and improved methods of training on promising vocational rehabilitation (VR) counseling, engagement, and service delivery strategies and practices to State VR agency personnel or other public or non-profit rehabilitation professionals and paraprofessionals (including those enrolled in master's or bachelor's level rehabilitation programs) to provide quality VR and supported employment services that lead to quality employment outcomes for individuals with disabilities. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We must receive your comments on or before January 17, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments must be submitted 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">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 by fax or by email, or comments submitted after the comment period closes. To ensure the Department does not receive duplicate copies, please submit your comments only once. In addition, please include the Docket ID at the top of your comments. <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> to submit your comments electronically. 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 on the Federal eRulemaking Portal 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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Felipe Lulli, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW, Room 4A10, Washington, DC 20202. Telephone: (202) 987-0128. Email: <E T="03">84.263G@ed.gov.</E> A brief summary of the proposed rule is available at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov/docket/ED-2024-OSERS-0131.</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> <E T="03">Invitation to Comment:</E> We invite you to submit comments regarding the proposed priority and requirements. To ensure that your comments have maximum effect in developing the final priority and requirements, we urge you to clearly identify the specific section of the proposed priority and requirements that each comment addresses. We are particularly interested in comments about whether the proposed priority and requirements would be challenging for new applicants to meet and, if so, how the proposed priority and requirements could be revised to address such potential challenges. We invite you to assist us in complying with the specific requirements of Executive Orders 12866, 13563, and 14094 and their overall requirement of reducing regulatory burden that might result from this proposed priority and requirements. Please let us know of any further ways we could reduce potential costs or increase potential benefits while preserving the effective and efficient administration of the program. During and after the comment period, you may inspect public comments about the proposed priority and requirements by accessing <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . To inspect comments in person, please contact the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <E T="03">Assistance to Individuals with Disabilities in Reviewing the Rulemaking Record:</E> On request we will provide an appropriate accommodation or auxiliary aid to an individual with a disability who needs assistance to review the comments or other documents in the public rulemaking record for this proposed priority and requirements. If you want to schedule an appointment for this type of accommodation or auxiliary aid, please contact the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <E T="03">Purpose of Program:</E> The Innovative Rehabilitation Training program is designed to develop (a) new types of training programs for rehabilitation personnel and to demonstrate the effectiveness of these new types of training programs for rehabilitation personnel in providing rehabilitation services to individuals with disabilities; (b) new and improved methods of training rehabilitation personnel so that there may be a more effective delivery of rehabilitation services to individuals with disabilities by designated State rehabilitation agencies and designated State rehabilitation units or other public or non-profit rehabilitation service agencies or organizations; and (c) new innovative training programs for VR professionals and paraprofessionals to have a 21st-century understanding of the evolving labor force and the needs of individuals with disabilities so they can more effectively provide VR services to individuals with disabilities. <E T="03">Program Authority:</E> 29 U.S.C. 709(c) and 772. <E T="03">Applicable Program Regulations:</E> 34 CFR parts 385 and 387. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Priority</HD> This document contains one proposed priority, Innovative Rehabilitation Training on Emerging VR Counseling, Engagement, and Service Delivery Strategies Leading to Quality Employment in 21st Century Careers for Individuals With Disabilities, and six topic areas under the priority. <E T="03">Background:</E> The Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA), Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services proposes this priority and these requirements, based on allowable activities under 34 CFR parts 385 and 387, to enable VR agency professionals to help more VR participants benefit from the training, education, and employment opportunities offered by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). The proposed priority would support the purposes of WIOA, including to “improve the quality and labor market relevance of workforce investment, education, and economic development efforts to provide America's workers with the skills and credentials necessary to secure and advance in employment with family-sustaining wages and to provide America's employers with the skilled workers the employers need to succeed in a global economy.” (WIOA sec. 2(3)). It is also consistent with RSA Technical Assistance Circulars 23-03 Maximizing Services and the Use of Funds to Support Quality Employment Outcomes for Individuals with Disabilities through the VR and Supported Employment Programs and 24-01 Promoting Meaningful and Sustained Engagement of Individuals with Disabilities in the VR Program; the RSA Commissioner's Dear Colleague Letters DCL-24-02 on RSA priorities and DCL-25-01 on artificial intelligence; and priority 5(j) of the Secretary's Supplemental priorities (Final Priority and Definitions, <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , December 10, 2021), reflecting the Department's commitment to effective VR services and use of funds, meaningful and sustained engagement with VR participants, collaboration with workforce development partners and community-based organizations including community rehabilitation programs (CRPs), advanced technology employment and training, and equity of access and opportunity for students with disabilities, disconnected youth and adults with disabilities. The proposed priority would promote quality employment for individuals with disabilities through innovative rehabilitation training to VR professionals on emerging VR counseling, engagement, and service delivery practices. Applicants would be able to apply under one or more of the priority's six topic areas: (1) VR Counselor Participant Engagement Practices, (2) Career Assessment Addressing Emerging Career and Employment Trends, (3) Preparing VR Participants for High-Quality Employment in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and Advanced Technology Careers, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), (4) Dual Customer Employer Engagement and Service Delivery Strategies, (5) Engagement and Service Delivery Strategies for Underserved Populations, and (6) Field Initiated. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Topic Area 1: VR Counselor Participant Engagement Practices</HD> Participant engagement is described as “an active, multifaceted process that involves the empowerment of participants, participants' exercise of self-determined informed choice, and their collaboration with employment specialists in the working alliance” (Johnson et al., 2009). Research and program data suggests that participant engagement contributes to successful VR services and outcomes, particularly by increasing participant retention in VR programs. Southwick and Schultz (2019) and Dutta et al. (2017) found that active engagement increases participants' motivation, expect ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 46k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━