The U.S. Department of Education is proposing high hurdles for school districts and nonprofit groups that want a piece of the $650 million Investing in Innovation grant program, including evidence of past success in helping students most in need and significant financial commitments from the private sector. The grants, which are meant to expand promising, innovative education improvement practices at the district level, would be divided into three tiers, with programs that have already shown evidence of success eligible for the heftiest grants. The biggest awards, or "scale up" grants, would be worth up to $50 million each for programs that are supported by "strong" evidence, such as evaluations of programs that use random assignment of students. The second category--"validation" grants, of up to $30 million each--would go to programs with "moderate" evidence of success. That could mean "quasi-experiments" that involve sophisticated statistical techniques that attempt to evaluate the true effects of a program or intervention. "Development" grants of up to $5 million each would be linked to programs that have "reasonable research-based findings or theories."