A notice that appeared in the Federal Register of April 3, 2002, announced that the "Teaching American History" application package was now available. Some $100 million for between 150–200 awards are available to support programs "to raise student achievement by improving teachers' knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of traditional American history."

Applications should be sent to the Department of Education's Application Control Center by June 3, 2002 (applications must be received or postmarked by this date). Electronic copies of the application package can be obtained from http://www.ed.gov/offices/OESE/TAH/tahgrant.html. (Adobe Acrobat is required for this.) A hard copy of the package can be obtained by contacting the program staff, at teachingamericanhistory@ed.gov and providing the mailing address to which the material should be sent.

As was the case last year, all applications must be submitted through local educational agencies (LEAs) but must be conducted in partnership with entities that have extensive content expertise to develop, document, evaluate, and disseminate innovative, cohesive models for professional development. The range of the awards will be $350,000 to $1, 000,000 with an estimated average grant being $500,000 over three years.

The DOE requests that if an LEA intends to apply for a grant, it should send a short e-mail notice to teachingamericanhistory@ed.gov. The e-mail need not include information regarding the content of the application, only the applicant's intent to apply. LEAs that fail to provide this email notification may still apply for funding.

The Teaching American History Grant program is one of the programs included in the DOE's pilot project of electronic submission of applications. Participation in this project is completely voluntary. Grant applications to the DOE may be made in either electronic or paper format. If interested in submitting an application electronically, go to http://e-grants.ed.gov.