The U.S. Education Department issued “interim final regulations” today for how it plans to carry out two new federal grant programs that are designed to reward academically talented students from low-income families. The regulations, published in the Federal Register, are effective for the 2006-7 academic year only.

Congress created the Academic Competitiveness Grant program and the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Grant program in February (The Chronicle, February 2). Under the competitiveness-grant program, freshmen and sophomores who qualify for Pell Grants are eligible to receive additional awards of $750 and $1,300, respectively, if they have completed “a rigorous secondary-school program of study.” The other program will provide additional awards of up to $4,000 a year to juniors and seniors who are eligible for Pell Grants and who major in math, science, or certain foreign languages, such as Arabic, Chinese, and Russian. Recipients of awards under either program must maintain a 3.0 grade-point average in college.

The interim final regulations contain few surprises, as the department had previously laid out the criteria it would use to determine eligibility for the grants this fall (The Chronicle, May 12). The department is soliciting comments on the interim rules and will use them to draft final regulations for the 2007-8 academic year.

Meanwhile, many states have been submitting plans to the department for how they will define academic rigor in high-school curricula (The Chronicle, June 30).