New Department of Education Tool Maps Early Learning Grant Winners

Several U.S. Department of Education programs provide discretionary funds to states, school districts and other organizations to create or expand early learning opportunities across the country. Now a new tool from the department helps to visualize the winners of grants from those programs.

Data.ed.gov recently released a map depicting grant awardees across all 50 states by year, from 2007 through 2011. It also contains a listing (available for download) of the program through which the grant was awarded, the awardees within each state and the dollar amount of each award. Programs encompassed by the data set include Native American and Alaskan education programs, Investing in Innovation (i3), Promise Neighborhoods, Striving Readers and the Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge, among others.

Not all of the grants in the map were made through programs specifically awarded to early education applicants. And the map excludes a number of early childhood programs housed in the Department of Health and Human Services rather than the Department of Education.  Nonetheless, this tool provides a compelling new way to envision the Department of Education’s efforts to promote early learning, and illustrates how many areas remain uncovered by the department’s grant funds.