FY 2026 Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) Grant Competition (84.423A)

FY 2026 Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) Grant Competition (84.423A)

The FY 2026 Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) competition was a federal discretionary grant opportunity for organizations working to prepare, develop, and strengthen educators. The U.S. Department of Labor solicited applications on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education, and the Department of Education remains the program’s public-facing agency and source of the official program information. The competition is now closed. This page keeps the real FY 2026 deadline and application details as a historical reference; it is not a current invitation to submit an application.

The official Department of Education program page lists an estimated $90 million in FY 2026 funding and 25–30 expected awards. It describes the purpose of SEED as increasing the number of highly effective educators through evidence-based practices, with projects that can be developed, expanded, evaluated, sustained, and disseminated. The page shows the application status as closed and does not announce a new competition. Applicants should therefore use this entry to understand the completed round and monitor the official ED and Grants.gov pages for any future notice.

Key details

What SEED funded

SEED was designed for evidence-based educator development rather than individual tuition assistance or a personal fellowship. A successful project would have connected a clear educator need to a defined intervention, an evaluation plan, and a credible path to continued use or broader dissemination. The official program purpose covers practices that prepare educators for the profession, develop the skills of practicing educators, or enhance existing educator capacity in ways that improve student outcomes.

The FY 2026 notice allowed projects to address teachers, principals, and other school leaders. Examples in the notice include nontraditional preparation and certification pathways serving traditionally underserved local educational agencies, evidence-based professional development addressing literacy, numeracy, remedial, or other local needs, and professional enhancement activities that may lead to an advanced credential. Leadership projects could address preparation or development for principals and other school leaders. The project still needed to fit the applicable evidence standard and the required priority structure; a broad professional-development idea without a supported model would not be enough.

The grant period could run for up to 36 months. The notice also says that the Department may renew an awarded grant for one additional 24-month period beyond the initial 36-month project period, subject to the statutory and performance-based conditions described in the notice. That renewal possibility was an award-stage provision, not a promise that every successful applicant would receive five years of funding.

Funding, cost sharing, and budget planning

The official FY 2026 Application Notice and Instructions estimated $90 million in available funds and 25–30 awards. It estimated a range of $1 million to $6 million per project year and an average award size of $3.5 million per performance period. These are planning estimates, not guaranteed award amounts. The notice expressly states that the Department is not bound by estimates in the notice, so applicants needed to build a budget that matched the proposed work instead of treating the top of the range as an entitlement.

The largest correction to the earlier page is the cost-sharing requirement. Each grantee must provide at least 25% of the total cost of project activities from non-federal sources for each year. The match may be cash or an in-kind contribution. Applicants were required to show matching contributions in the annual budget and provide evidence of the first-year match with the application. The federal request therefore represents no more than 75% of the total project cost under the notice’s formula. A project requesting $3 million in federal funds, for example, would need a total project budget of $4 million and at least $1 million in non-federal support if the full match ratio applied to that request.

The budget needed to distinguish federal and non-federal resources and explain the allocation for every project year. The SF-424A covered the federal request and non-federal resources, while the budget narrative explained personnel, fringe benefits, travel, equipment, supplies, contractual services, other direct costs, and indirect costs. The notice also included supplement-not-supplant requirements for Title II funds. A strong budget would have connected each cost to an activity, performance measure, staffing role, or evaluation obligation.

Who was eligible

The FY 2026 notice identified four eligible applicant routes:

1. An institution of higher education that provides course materials or resources supported by evidence of increasing academic achievement, graduation rates, or postsecondary education matriculation.
2. A national nonprofit entity with a demonstrated record of raising student academic achievement, graduation rates, or higher-education attendance, matriculation, or completion, or a demonstrated record of effective preparation and professional development programs for teachers, principals, or other school leaders.
3. The Bureau of Indian Education.
4. A partnership consisting of one or more entities from the IHE or national nonprofit categories and a for-profit entity.

The fourth route did not make a for-profit organization eligible to apply alone. The eligible IHE or national nonprofit had to be part of the partnership. Nonprofit applicants also needed to be ready to document nonprofit status through one of the forms accepted under the notice, such as current IRS recognition, a state certification, or qualifying incorporation documentation.

The Department of Education’s public eligibility list includes broad organization types such as IHEs, nonprofit organizations, consortia, and for-profit organizations, but the detailed FY 2026 notice controls the actual applicant test. State educational agencies were not listed as a standalone lead-applicant category in the notice. A state or local education agency could participate in project activities or receive a subgrant from an awarded grantee when permitted by the award and approved project structure, but that is different from being independently eligible to lead an application.

Priorities and evidence expectations

The notice contained four absolute priorities and three competitive preference priorities. Applicants had to meet either Absolute Priority 1 or 2 and either Absolute Priority 3 or 4. In other words, an application needed one teacher-or-leader priority and one literacy-or-meaningful-learning priority. The applicant could also clearly identify competitive preference priorities to seek additional points, but preference priorities were not a substitute for the required absolute-priority combination.

The four absolute priorities were:

• Supporting Effective Teachers, including evidence-based work such as nontraditional preparation pathways, professional development addressing local instructional needs, or professional enhancement.
• Supporting Effective Principals and Other School Leaders, with activities supported by the evidence standard specified for that priority.
• Promoting Evidence-Based Literacy.
• Meaningful Learning Opportunities for Students.

The three competitive preference priorities were Returning Education to the States, Advancing Artificial Intelligence in Education, and Career Pathways and Workforce Readiness. The notice allowed up to 10 points for the first preference, up to 5 for the artificial-intelligence preference, and up to 5 for the career-pathways preference. Applicants had to identify a preference priority clearly for the Department to review it and award points. Mentioning artificial intelligence or workforce development in passing would not automatically earn preference points.

The evidence form was central to the application. The applicant had to cite evidence for the selected absolute priorities and explain how the proposed activities met the relevant evidence threshold. The narrative also needed a logic model, performance measures, implementation plan, and evaluation or evidence-building approach. A proposal could describe an ambitious educator pipeline, coaching model, literacy initiative, or school-leader program, but it still needed to show what would happen, for whom, how progress would be measured, and how the model could be sustained or disseminated.

How the FY 2026 application worked

The competition’s application route was electronic through Grants.gov. The official instructions required the following sequence:

1. Confirm the applicant category, priority combination, evidence requirements, match obligation, and project period before assembling the package.
2. Maintain an active registration in SAM.gov and Grants.gov. The SAM registration had to include the organization’s Unique Entity Identifier, and the UEI on the application had to match the UEI used by the Authorized Organization Representative.
3. Download and read the FY 2026 Application Notice and Instructions and the 2025 Common Instructions for Applicants to Department of Education Discretionary Grant Programs. The application notice was the governing competition document.
4. Build the application in Grants.gov Workspace. The notice allowed a team to work on different web forms in the shared application environment, but registration had to be complete before submission.
5. Complete the required forms and attach the narrative and supporting documents in the correct sections. The Department warned applicants not to place narratives or other components on the SF-424 attachment area; ED would review materials attached according to the application instructions, including the Other Attachments Form.
6. Submit through the Grants.gov APPLY function before the deadline and allow time for upload, validation, and correction if the system rejected the package.
7. Verify receipt in Grants.gov. A timely, successful submission needed a received date and time before the closing time and a status such as Validated, Received by Agency, or Agency Tracking Number Assigned.

The required application package included the SF-424, ED Supplemental Information for SF-424, ED project objectives and performance measures form, Evidence Form, SF-424A, project abstract, application narrative, budget narrative, key-personnel resumes, nonprofit-status documentation when applicable, Standard Form LLL, and the Grants.gov lobbying form. The optional SEED application checklist was intended to help applicants confirm that required information appeared in the correct part of the package.

FY 2026 timeline and current status

The Department published the competition on April 16, 2026. The notice invited applicants to send an intent-to-apply email to SEED@ed.gov by May 1, 2026, using the requested subject line. Complete applications were due through Grants.gov by June 1, 2026, at 11:59:59 p.m. Eastern time. The Department’s timeline estimated award announcements on or before September 30, 2026. The application notice also listed July 31, 2026 as the deadline for intergovernmental review.

The official ED page now marks the application status as closed. The Grants.gov opportunity record is archived, and the official sources reviewed for this update do not announce a next-round deadline. The metadata therefore retains June 1, 2026 as the actual closed-cycle deadline and sets historicalReference = true. That combination tells the site that the date is an archive fact, not a live submission date. It would be misleading to replace the date with a guessed future deadline or to describe the program as continuously accepting applications when the FY 2026 notice used a fixed closing time.

Official sources

• U.S. Department of Education SEED program page — current public program page, status, funding, eligibility, timeline, forms, and contact information.
• Federal Register FY 2026 competition notice — official notice announcing the competition, eligible applicants, fixed deadline, priorities, and program authority.
• Grants.gov FY 2026 application opportunity — opportunity number DOL-OESE-33914 and application package location.

For any future SEED competition, applicants should start with a newly published ED or Grants.gov notice rather than copying the FY 2026 dates or assumptions. The program’s purpose may remain similar while eligibility details, priorities, funding, match rules, forms, and deadlines change from one competition to the next.