$90 Million for Educator Development — and the Labor Department Is Running It

The Supporting Effective Educator Development program has been funding teacher preparation and school leadership initiatives since 2011. This year, for the first time, the application does not go through the Department of Education. It goes through the Department of Labor.

That administrative shift — announced April 16, 2026, as part of a broader interagency agreement between the two departments — is easy to dismiss as bureaucratic reshuffling. It is not. The realignment reflects a deliberate policy decision to reframe educator preparation as workforce development, with implications that extend far beyond which federal agency processes the paperwork.

The FY2026 SEED competition makes approximately $90 million available for 25 to 30 new awards, with individual grants ranging from $1 million to $6 million per project year over a 36-month performance period. Applications close June 1, 2026, through Grants.gov.

The Partnership That Rewired Federal Education Funding

The story starts in May 2025, when the Departments of Education and Labor signed an Economy Act Interagency Agreement authorizing DOL to perform day-to-day administrative services for several of ED's grant programs. The initial transfer covered Career and Technical Education programs under the Perkins Act and Adult Education and Family Literacy programs under WIOA Title II.

The legal mechanism was straightforward — 31 U.S.C. § 1535 allows federal agencies to procure services from one another. The policy logic was more ambitious. Education Secretary Linda McMahon described the partnership as "a commonsense step in streamlining these programs." Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer was more pointed, calling out a "bloated federal bureaucracy" that had made workforce programs difficult to administer effectively.

By December 2025, the partnership had processed nearly 800 payment requests from 43 states and territories and onboarded all grantees to DOL's GrantSolutions and Payment Management Systems. The joint agencies launched an integrated WIOA state plan portal and began synchronizing their workforce planning timelines.

Then the partnership expanded. In early 2026, DOL began administering elementary and secondary education grants — programs that had never been associated with the Labor Department. First came Innovative Approaches to Literacy and the Teacher and School Leader Incentive program. Then came SEED and the Competitive Grants for State Assessments program, announced in April and May 2026.

The practical effect for applicants is that SEED proposals are now submitted through Grants.gov under a DOL opportunity number (DOL-OESE-33914), processed through DOL's grant management infrastructure, and supported by DOL technical assistance staff. The statutory authority — Section 202 of the Higher Education Act — remains with the Department of Education. ED retains policy control and oversight. But the administrative machinery has moved.

What This Means for Applicants

For organizations that have applied to SEED before, the most immediate change is procedural. The submission portal, the program officer contacts, and the administrative workflow are different. Past SEED applicants who have existing relationships with ED program staff should expect to build new relationships with DOL counterparts.

More substantively, the DOL administration introduces a workforce development lens to a program that was previously framed primarily around educational effectiveness. The competitive preference priorities for the FY2026 competition reflect this shift. While SEED has always included priorities around teacher preparation and school leadership, the 2026 competition adds two notable emphases.

First, a competitive preference for projects endorsed by a governor or chief state education official. This is not a new concept in federal grants — state endorsement requirements appear across multiple programs — but its inclusion in SEED signals an expectation that successful projects will align with state workforce and education strategies rather than operating as standalone institutional initiatives.

Second, and more strikingly, a competitive preference for projects that expand artificial intelligence through professional development for educators on integrating AI into their subject areas. This is one of the first major federal education grants to explicitly incentivize AI educator training — and it arrives at a moment when schools across the country are grappling with whether and how to incorporate AI tools into instruction.

The Four Absolute Priorities

The FY2026 SEED competition includes four absolute priorities. Applicants must address at least one.

Supporting Effective Teachers. Projects that develop, implement, or expand evidence-based teacher preparation, recruitment, or retention programs. This is SEED's traditional core — and the priority that accounts for the largest share of historical awards. Successful proposals in this category typically involve partnerships between universities and school districts, alternative certification programs with demonstrated outcomes data, or professional development models that can show measurable impact on student achievement.

Supporting Effective Principals and School Leaders. Projects focused on principal pipeline programs, leadership development, and school leader retention. The research base connecting principal quality to school outcomes has strengthened considerably over the past decade, and SEED has responded by increasing the share of awards targeting leadership development. Proposals in this category benefit from referencing the growing body of evidence on principal effectiveness — particularly studies showing that effective principals are the single most important school-level factor in teacher retention.

Promoting Evidence-Based Literacy. Projects that develop or expand literacy instruction programs grounded in the science of reading. This priority reflects the broader national movement toward structured literacy approaches and away from the balanced literacy and whole-language methods that dominated for decades. Applicants proposing literacy-focused projects should align explicitly with the science of reading research base — proposals that reference discredited approaches will face significant headwinds from reviewers.

Meaningful Learning Opportunities for Students. Projects that create or expand student learning opportunities through innovative instructional approaches. This is the broadest of the four priorities and the one most likely to attract proposals incorporating the AI competitive preference. Projects that combine AI-integrated instruction with measurable student outcome metrics have a strong strategic position in the 2026 competition.

The Eligibility Question

SEED eligibility is narrower than many federal education grants. Three categories of applicants qualify.

Institutions of higher education that provide course materials or programming that are evidence-based. This includes traditional colleges of education, but also institutions that operate alternative certification programs, residency models, or other non-traditional pathways into teaching.

National nonprofit organizations with a demonstrated record of raising student academic achievement. The "national" qualifier is important — regional or local nonprofits are not eligible unless they partner with a qualifying national organization. Organizations like Teach for America (which has received multiple SEED awards totaling over $16 million), the New Teacher Project, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards are archetypal eligible entities.

The Bureau of Indian Education. BIE is independently eligible, reflecting the chronic educator shortages in BIE-funded schools and the unique workforce challenges in tribal education settings.

A fourth category — partnerships between any of the above entities and for-profit organizations — is also eligible. This creates space for ed-tech companies, professional development firms, and workforce analytics businesses to participate, but only in partnership with a qualifying lead applicant.

Organizations that do not fit these categories should not apply. Unlike many federal grants, SEED does not have a broad "nonprofit organization" eligibility — the national scope and demonstrated track record requirements are enforced during eligibility review.

Historical Context: $24 Million to $94 Million

SEED funding has fluctuated significantly since the program's inception. The lowest appropriation was $24.6 million in 2011. The highest was $93.9 million in 2016. Recent years have settled in the $75-90 million range, making the FY2026 allocation of $90 million consistent with the program's recent trajectory.

The average award size has increased over time, from roughly $2 million per project year in early cohorts to $3.5 million in recent competitions. This reflects both inflation and a deliberate shift toward fewer, larger grants with more ambitious scope. The FY2026 competition estimates 25-30 awards — down from 35-40 in some prior years — suggesting continued movement toward larger, more concentrated investments.

Past awards provide a useful map of what reviewers value. Georgia State University's CREATE program received $10.4 million for a teacher residency model that placed candidates in high-need schools with intensive mentoring. Western Michigan University received $15 million for a principal leadership initiative. Multiple awards have gone to alternative certification programs, Grow Your Own teacher pipeline models, and literacy coaching networks.

The common thread across successful proposals is not programmatic novelty for its own sake but rigorous evidence of impact. SEED is an evidence-based program in the strictest sense — applicants must demonstrate that their proposed approach has existing research support, and the grant funds are intended to scale what works rather than to experiment with untested ideas.

Strategy for the June 1 Deadline

The June 1 deadline leaves roughly three weeks from today — an extremely tight window for organizations that have not already been developing their proposals. For applicants who have been tracking SEED and have draft proposals in progress, the timeline is manageable. For those starting fresh, the realistic path is to submit for a future competition rather than rush an underdeveloped application into a $90 million competition.

For those who are ready to compete, several strategic considerations are worth emphasizing.

The AI competitive preference is new and will attract considerable interest, but it is still a preference — not a requirement. Applicants should not force AI content into proposals where it does not fit naturally. A strong literacy coaching proposal without AI will outscore a weak AI integration proposal. But for organizations with genuine AI educator training capabilities, the preference creates a meaningful scoring advantage that competitors without it will need to overcome through other strengths.

The governor endorsement preference requires lead time. A letter of endorsement from a governor's office cannot be obtained overnight, and proposals that claim alignment with state priorities without official documentation will not receive the preference points. Organizations that already have relationships with their state education agencies or governor's workforce development offices are best positioned to secure endorsements quickly.

Finally, the DOL administration means that technical assistance and program support will come through different channels than in prior years. Applicants should monitor the DOL Employment and Training Administration's grants page for any pre-application webinars, FAQ documents, or technical assistance opportunities specific to the FY2026 SEED competition.

For organizations building educator development programs that align with SEED's priorities, Granted can help identify complementary funding from state education agencies, foundations, and other federal programs that layer with SEED to build sustainable, multi-source initiatives.