[Federal Register: April 16, 2002 (Volume 67, Number 73)]
[Notices]
[Page 18598-18599]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr16ap02-52]
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DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
[CFDA Nos. 84.305J, 84.305H, and 84.305G]
Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) Research
Grant Programs; Notice of Application Review Procedures for Certain New
Awards for Fiscal Year 2002
SUMMARY: This notice establishes procedures that OERI will use to
review applications for research grants under the Preschool Curriculum
Evaluation Research Grant Program, the Cognition and Student Learning
Research Grant Program, and the Reading Comprehension Research Grant
Program in fiscal year 2002. These procedures modify the procedures
governing the review of applications in 34 CFR part 700.
Application Review Procedure
OERI will form a peer review panel that will be composed of
reviewers who are expert in the substantive area of the competition.
The panel will be of sufficient size to review carefully all
applications submitted for the particular competition. All eligible
applications received for the competition will be provided to all
members of the panel, either electronically, for those applications
submitted electronically, or in paper copy. All reviewers will be
expected to be familiar enough with the applications to participate in
a discussion of the applications at the review panel meeting.
A primary, secondary, and tertiary reviewer (lead reviewers) will
be identified for each eligible application. Each member of the panel
will serve as a lead reviewer for a number of applications. Prior to
the panel meeting, panel members will independently review and rate
those applications for which they are assigned lead reviewer
responsibilities. For each assigned application, the lead reviewers
will complete technical review forms, fully documenting their judgments
regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the application according to
the published selection criteria and assigning a preliminary rating for
each criterion.
The four selection criteria to be used to evaluate applications
were published in the application notices for the competitions, along
with the weights assigned to each criterion. The criteria and weights
are: National Significance (.2), Quality of the Project Design (.5),
Quality and Potential Contributions of Personnel (.2), and Adequacy of
Resources (.1).
In assigning ratings for each criterion, reviewers will use a
seven-point scale. The scale is anchored on each end, with 7 =
Excellent and 1 = Poor.
Prior to the panel meeting, panel members will send to the OERI
program official their preliminary ratings for each criterion for each
application for which they are a lead reviewer. Applying the criterion
weights, OERI staff will calculate the preliminary score of the
primary, secondary, and tertiary reviewer for each application, as well
as the average score of the lead reviewers for each application. A
preliminary rank order will be prepared based on the average lead
reviewer score for each application. Prior to the opening session of
the panel meeting, all members of the panel will be provided the
preliminary rank order, along with the average lead reviewer score and
the individual scores of the primary, secondary, and tertiary
reviewers, for each application.
At the panel meeting, the full panel will convene to discuss the
strengths and weaknesses of applications. Applications that received
average lead reviewer scores that place them in the bottom half of all
applications, as shown on the preliminary rank order, will be deemed
non-competitive and will not be discussed, unless (a) a member of the
panel, who believes that a particular application might be competitive,
requests that the application be discussed by the full panel; (b) the
OERI program official determines that a larger proportion of
applications needs to be discussed in order to ensure fair
consideration among applications with tightly clustered scores; or (c)
the OERI program official determines that the total number of
applications received is too small to warrant differential discussion
of applications, in which case all applications will be discussed. For
any competition for which the OERI program official determines that the
total number of applications received is too large for the entire top
half of applications to be considered competitive, then only the top
proportion of applications that represents approximately three times
the estimated number of applications to be funded will be discussed by
the full panel. For example, if 90 applications are received and
approximately 10 can be funded, then the top one-third of applications
will be discussed by the full panel.
A panel chairperson designated by the OERI program official will
lead the discussion of applications. For each application, the primary,
secondary, and tertiary reviewers will each discuss strengths and
weaknesses of the application and answer any questions posed by other
panel members.
[[Page 18599]]
Following the discussion of applications, each member of the panel
will independently rate each application on each criterion, using the
seven-point scale. In addition, each reviewer will indicate for each
application whether the reviewer highly recommends funding, recommends
funding, or does not recommend funding of the application. Lead
reviewers will be able to change their preliminary ratings and modify
their documented technical review forms at this time.
Following the review panel meeting, the OERI program official and
OERI staff will apply the published weights to the ratings provided by
reviewers in order to calculate reviewer scores for each of the
applications. Then the average score will be calculated for each
application, and a rank order will be prepared of all applications that
were scored by the full panel. The rank order will also indicate, for
each application, the number of reviewers who highly recommended the
application be funded, the number who recommended that it be funded,
and the number who recommended that the application not be funded.
Waiver of Proposed Rulemaking
In accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C. 553),
it is the practice of the Secretary to offer interested parties the
opportunity to comment on proposed regulations. However, because this
notice merely establishes procedural requirements for review of
applications and does not create substantive policy, the Secretary has
determined that proposed rulemaking is not required under 5 U.S.C.
553(b)(A).
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Elizabeth Payer, Office of Educational
Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, 555 New Jersey
Avenue, NW., room 502e, Washington, DC 20208-5645. Telephone: (202)
219-1310 or via Internet: Elizabeth_Payer@ed.gov.
If you use a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD), you may
call the Federal Information Relay Service (FIRS) at 1-800-877-8339.
Individuals with disabilities may obtain this document in an
alternative format (e.g., Braille, large print, audiotape, or computer
diskette) on request to the program contact person listed under FOR
FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT.
Electronic Access to This Document
You may view this document, as well as all other Department of
Education documents published in the Federal Register, in text or Adobe
Portable Document Format (PDF) on the Internet at the following site:
http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister.
To use PDF you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available
free at this site. If you have questions about using PDF, call the U.S.
Government Printing Office (GPO), toll free, at 1-888-293-6498; or in
the Washington, DC, area at (202) 512-1530.
Note: The official version of this document is the document
published in the Federal Register. Free Internet access to the
official edition of the Federal Register and the Code of Federal
Regulations is available on GPO Access at: http://
www.access.gpo.gov/nara/index.html.
Program Authority: 20 U.S.C. 6031(c).
Dated: April 10, 2002.
Grover J. Whitehurst,
Assistant Secretary for Educational Research and Improvement.
[FR Doc. 02-9235 Filed 4-15-02; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4000-01-P