State Implementation And Perceptions Of Title I School Improvement Grants Under The Recovery Act

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), also known as the stimulus package, appropriated $100 billion for education and included $3 billion for school improvement grants (SIGs) to help reform low-performing schools. This amount was in addition to the $546 million provided by the regular fiscal year 2009 appropriations bill for school improvement grants authorized by section 1003(g) of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. (Title I is the large federal program that provides assistance to low-income schools to improve achievement for students who struggle academically.) This fiscal year 2009 total of more than $3.5 billion for section 1003(g) SIGs represents a seven-fold increase over the previous year's appropriation. Following passage of ARRA, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) changed the requirements for using school improvement grants under section 1003(g), including the ARRA SIG funds (U.S. Department of Education, 2011). These revised requirements target section 1003(g) funds on the "persistently lowest-achieving" schools within each state, typically the lowest 5%, and limit these schools to using one of four school improvement models. These models include (1) transformation, which entails replacing the school principal and undertaking three other specific reforms; (2) turnaround, which involves replacing the principal and many of the school staff; (3) restart, which means becoming a charter or privately managed school; and (4) school closure. According to a report published by the U.S. Department of Education, 1,228 of the nation's lowest-achieving schools were awarded ARRA SIGs as of March 21, 2011 (Hurlburt et al., 2011). This report looks at states' experiences in using this infusion of ARRA SIG funding and implementing the new requirements. It is a follow-up to a 2011 CEP report that examined states' early experiences in implementing ARRA SIG grants (CEP, 2011). Both this report and the earlier one are based on surveys of state department of education personnel. For this 2012 report, the authors administered a survey to state Title I directors from November 2011 through early January 2012 that focused on state processes for renewing the ARRA SIG grants made for school year 2010-11, state assistance to schools, and general perceptions of the ARRA SIG program. A total of 46 states responded, including the District of Columbia, which is counted as a state in all tallies in the report. Several key findings are evident from the authors' analysis of the survey data: (1) States are generally positive about the ARRA SIG requirements; (2) The transformation school improvement model remains the most popular model chosen by schools in responding states; (3) Most of the states responding to the survey (35 of 46) renewed all of the ARRA SIG awards made in school year 2010-11 for a second year of funding in 2011-12; (4) All of the responding states reported providing technical support to ARRA SIG-funded schools and their districts, and most are providing other types of assistance; (5) More than half of the responding states indicated that they have an adequate level of staff expertise in their state education agency (SEA) to assist ARRA SIG recipients; and (6) Most states (32) reported that external providers played a role in implementing the ARRA SIG program during the first year of funding. (Contains 8 figures, 3 tables, 3 boxes and 3 footnotes.) [For key findings, "Key Findings from Two Reports on Federal School Improvement Grants by the Center on Education Policy," see ED532798. For the appendix, "State Implementation and Perceptions of Title I School Improvement Grants under the Recovery Act: One Year Later. Online Appendix--State Responses to Open-Ended Questions about the ARRA SIG Program," see ED532793.].