Proposed Priorities and Definitions-Secretary's Supplemental Priorities and Definitions on Evidence-Based Literacy, Education Choice, and Returning Education to the States

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION <CFR>34 CFR Part 75</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID ED-2025-OS-0020]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Proposed Priorities and Definitions—Secretary's Supplemental Priorities and Definitions on Evidence-Based Literacy, Education Choice, and Returning Education to the States</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> U.S. Department of Education. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed priorities and definitions. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Secretary proposes three initial and urgent priorities and related definitions for use in currently authorized discretionary grant programs or programs that may be authorized in the future. The Secretary may choose to use an entire priority for a grant program or a particular competition or use one or more of the priority's component parts. These priorities and definitions are intended to replace the Secretary's supplemental priorities published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on December 10, 2021 (86 FR 70612) and all other agency-wide supplemental priorities published prior to January 20, 2025. However, those priorities remain in effect for notices inviting applications (NIAs) published before the U.S. Department of Education (Department) finalizes the proposed priorities in this document. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We must receive your comments on or before June 20, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">regulations.gov.</E> However, if you require an accommodation or cannot otherwise submit your comments via <E T="03">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 by fax or by email, or comments submitted after the comment period closes. To ensure that the Department does not receive duplicate copies, please submit your comments only once. Additionally, 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">Privacy Note:</E> The Department's policy is to generally make all comments received from members of the public available for public viewing in their entirety on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">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> Zachary Rogers, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW, Room 7W213, Washington, DC 20202-6450. Telephone: (202) 260-1144. Email: <E T="03">SSP@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> <E T="03">Invitation to Comment:</E> We invite you to submit comments regarding the proposed priorities and definitions. Please submit your comments only once so that we do not receive duplicate copies. The Department will not accept comments submitted after the comment period closes. We invite you to assist us in complying with the specific requirements of Executive Orders 12866, 13563, and 14192 and their overall requirement of reducing regulatory burden that might result from these proposed priorities and definitions. 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. For your comments to have maximum effect in developing the final priorities and definitions, we provide the following tips: • Be concise but support your claims. • Explain your views as clearly as possible and avoid using profanity. • Refer to specific sections and subsections of the proposed priorities and definitions throughout your comments, particularly in any headings that are used to organize your submission. • Arrange your comments in the same order as the proposed priorities and definitions. • Explain why you agree or disagree with the proposed priorities or definitions and support these reasons with data-driven evidence, including the depth and breadth of your personal and professional experiences. • Where you disagree with the proposed priorities or definitions, suggest alternatives, including revised priority or definition language, and your rationale for the alternative suggestion. In instances where individual submissions appear to be duplicates or near duplicates of comments prepared as part of a writing campaign, the Department may choose to post to <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> one representative sample comment along with the total comment count for that campaign. The Department will consider these comments along with all other comments received. In instances where individual submissions are bundled together (submitted as a single document or packaged together), the Department will post all of the substantive comments included in the submissions along with the total comment count for that document or package to <E T="03">Regulations.gov.</E> A well-supported comment is often more informative to the agency than multiple form letters. Comments containing personal threats will not be posted to <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> and may be referred to the appropriate authorities. During and after the comment period, you may inspect public comments about the proposed priorities and definitions 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 document. 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">Program Authority:</E> 20 U.S.C. 1221e-3, 3474, 6301 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> 5 U.S.C. 311 <E T="03">et seq.</E> <E T="03">Proposed Priorities:</E> This document contains three proposed priorities. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Priority 1: Promoting Evidence-Based Literacy</HD> <E T="03">Background:</E> Recent test scores consistently reveal that American students are struggling to meet grade-level reading standards. The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which showed that 4th and 8th grade students are lagging far behind in literacy, highlight the urgent need to address this critical issue. Reading scores have reached historic lows, with the most notable drops observed among students in the bottom quartile of performers. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Despite billions of dollars in annual federal education funding, these scores show no signs of improvement, even with record investments in programs intended to enhance the educational experience of American students. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). “Explore Results of the 2024 NAEP Reading Assessment.” <E T="03">https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reports/reading/2024/g4_8/.</E> </FTNT> Federal education spending must now prioritize a vital and foundational goal: ensuring that every student in America becomes proficient in reading. Effective evidence-based literacy instruction should be supported by strong or moderate evidence that relates to explicit, systematic, and intentional instruction in phonological awareness, phonic decoding, vocabulary, language structure, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. It is essential that taxpayer dollars focus on initiatives that directly benefit students through effective literacy instruction and ensure that educator pipelines at the postsecondary level keep evidence-based literacy at the forefront while preparing the educators of tomorrow. It is time for the United States to refocus its education investments on the most essential skill a student can acquire: literacy. The ability to read is the foundation for all learning, unlocking opportunities for academic, professional, and personal achievement and strengthening critical thinking skills essential to lifelong success. <E T="03">Proposed Priority:</E> Projects or proposals to do one or more of the following: (a) Advance, increase, or expand evidence-based literacy instruction (as defined in this notice), or (b) Focus on evidence-based literacy instruction (as defined in this notice). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Priority 2: Expanding Education Choice</HD> <E T="03">Background:</E> When our conventional public education system fails such a large segment of society, it hinders our national competitiveness and imperils families and communities. Education choice empowers parents and families to seek the best learning environment for their children, fostering innovation in education models that address the unique needs of students across the country. Education choice ensures that every child has the opportunity to access a high-quality education and pursue the American Dream, regardless of their zip code. Education choice gives parents, who understand their children's needs best, the ability to make informed decisions about their children's educat ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 38k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━