CFDA Number: 84.286
Program Type: Discretionary/Competitive Grants
Also Known As: Telecommunications Demostration Project for Mathematics

The purpose of this program is to carry out a national telecommunications-based program to improve teaching in core curricular areas. The program is designed to assist elementary and secondary school teachers in preparing all students to achieve challenging state academic content and student academic achievement standards in core curricular areas. The program also authorizes digital education programming grants for the development, distribution, and production of innovative educational video programming.

This program supports projects that promote online professional development for teachers in core curricular areas.

The Ready to Teach program supports two types of competitive grants to nonprofit telecommunications entities: (a) grants to carry out a national telecommunications-based program to improve teaching in core curriculum areas; and (b) digital educational programming grants that enable eligible entities to develop, produce, and distribute innovative educational and instructional video programming. In order to allow grantees sufficient time to produce a significant body of meaningful content, digital education programming grants last for a period of 3 years. Digital educational programming grants also require a match of not less than 100 percent. They also must be based on challenging State academic content and student academic achievement standards in reading or mathematics. Prior to fiscal year 2002, only a national telecommunications-based demonstration project for mathematics was authorized.