Proposed Priority and Definitions-Secretary's Supplemental Priority and Definitions on Promoting Patriotic Education

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION <CFR>34 CFR Part 75</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID ED-2025-OS-0745]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Proposed Priority and Definitions—Secretary's Supplemental Priority and Definitions on Promoting Patriotic Education</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> U.S. Department of Education. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed priority and definitions. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Secretary proposes one additional priority 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 the entire priority for a grant program or a particular competition or use one or more of the priority's component parts. This priority and definitions augment other Secretary's Supplemental Priorities, such as the initial set of three Secretary's Supplemental Priorities on Evidence-Based Literacy, Educational Choice, and Returning Education to the States published as final priorities on September 9, 2025, (90 FR 43514) and the additional Secretary's Supplemental Priority on Artificial Intelligence published as a proposed priority on July 21, 2025 (90 FR 34203). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We must receive your comments on or before October 17, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . See the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section for more details. <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 priority and definitions. 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.” Also included on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> is a commenter checklist that addresses how to submit effective comments. 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> 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 priority 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">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. <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. <E T="03">Proposed Priority:</E> This document contains one proposed priority. <E T="03">Proposed Priority: Promoting Patriotic Education.</E> <E T="03">Background:</E> The success of the American experiment in self-government requires the cultivation of both citizenship competency and informed patriotism among the American People. Citizens must understand why our free-market economy is a highly evolved system of cooperation fostered by our constitutional republic, and how it functions to secure the blessings of liberty for all Americans. This understanding can only be acquired and prove to be lasting when rooted in a recognition of the nobility of America's foundational principles and ideals, and an accurate and honest account of American history that shows how the United States has worked through private and public efforts to live up to them better. All too often, government is misunderstood to be synonymous with those things that We the People do together when in fact it is merely a subset thereof. Rather, our voluntary individual actions channeled through the intermediary institutions of civil society—such as our companies, places of worship, schools, fraternal organizations, and civic associations—are critically important to the proper functioning of the American economic, social, and political system. In the American system of liberty, educated citizens who know their rights and meet their responsibilities cooperate to build a more perfect Union and inherit the opportunities of a free society. To provide a common foundation and shared conception of this more perfect Union, we must transmit to all American students a shared understanding of our political, economic, intellectual, and cultural history—including our national symbols and heroes. At the same time, this American political tradition must be situated within the broader context of the political, economic, intellectual, and cultural history of Western Civilization. This priority focuses grant funds on programs that promote a patriotic education that cultivates citizen competency and informed patriotism among and communicates the American political tradition to students at all levels, including activities and programs accessible to students with special needs. <E T="03">Proposed Priority:</E> Projects that are designed to provide an introduction to and understanding of the founding documents and primary sources of the American political tradition, in a manner consistent with the principles of a patriotic education. Projects may address one or more of the following topics: (a) United States Constitution, government, and civics. (b) United States history and geography. (c) United States military and diplomatic history. (d) United States literature and rhetoric. (e) United States art (architecture, painting, music, photography, theater, cinema, and sculpture, etc.). (f) The founding documents and primary sources of Western Civilization and the American founding and their influence on the American political tradition. (g) The influence of Western Europe upon the American political tradition. <E T="03">Types of Priorities:</E> When inviting applications for a competition using one or more priorities, we designate the type of each priority as absolute, competitive preference, or invitational through a notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . The effect of each type of priority follows: <E T="03">Absolute priority:</E> Under an absolute priority, we consider only applications that meet the priority (34 CFR 75.105(c)(3)). <E T="03">Competitive preference priority:</E> Under a competitive preference priority, we give competitive preference to an application by (1) awarding additional points, depending on the extent to which the application meets the priority (34 CFR 75.105(c)(2)(i)); or (2) selecting an application that meets the priority over an application of comparable merit that does not meet the priority (34 CFR 75.105(c)(2)(ii)). <E T="03">Invitational priority:</E> Under an invitational priority, we are particularly interested in applications that meet the priority. However, we do not give an application that meets the priority a preference over other applications (34 CFR 75.105(c)(1)). <E T="03">Proposed Definitions:</E> <E T="03">Background:</E> The Secretary proposes the following definitions for use in any Department discretionary grant program in which the proposed priority is used. <E T="03">American political tradition</E> includes the founding documents, essential principles of republican government, and historical development of America's government; key works of history, literature, humanities, and art ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━