Problems plague School Improvement Grant program
State Board cracks down on current recipients, delays new round of awards
Published: August 1, 2011
Schools currently receiving federal School Improvement Grant funding need to bring their programs into compliance with SIG’s required school reforms, and school districts interested in applying for the next round of grants will have to wait until problems with the overall program are ironed out.
That was the upshot of the State Board of Education’s action on the issue during a two-day meeting last month when the board also acted on new regulations on charter school renewals, appeals and revocations (see related story) and permanent regulations for the Parent Empowerment Act, and heard an update on Common Core State Standards.
“It’s a mess,” CSBA Principal Legislative Advocate Erika Hoffmann said of the SIG situation, “and there are going to be even bigger questions at the September State Board meeting.”
Ninety Title I schools in California are entering their second year of participation in SIG, an established federal program that benefited from an infusion of stimulus funding in 2009. The Obama administration targeted that supplemental funding to competitive grants for three-year programs underwriting underperforming schools that adopt one of its reform models: turnaround, often requiring replacement of principals; transformation, generally requiring replacement of principals and much of the staff, along with other changes; conversion to charters; or closure.
Those 90 schools were selected for funding by the State Board last year from a list of eligible schools that provoked controversy over its criteria—limiting the number of schools in any given district that would be eligible, for example. The program hasn’t gotten any less contentious as it’s developed, with chronic miscommunication reported between the federal, state and local levels.
Federal monitors issued a critical report after observing the CDE’s program administration and visiting several California schools last spring. State and local education officials, in turn, have expressed confusion over program requirements. CDE staffers at the State Board’s July 13 meeting, for example, specified that requirements to provide extended learning time applied to all students and to both core instruction and enrichment, along with enhanced teacher collaboration—details that may not have been clear in previous federal guidance.
“It sounds like we have to rewrite some of these [requirements] into plain English,” board President Michael Kirst commented. The panel voted unanimously to follow a staff recommendation to renew SIG funding for the 90 schools in the second year of their SIG grants—but with the proviso that all required elements of their SIG programs must be in place.
Because of the uncertainties with the existing grants, the State Board also declined to award a second wave of SIG allocations to new applicants for the 2011–12 school year; instead, California will seek a waiver allowing it to carry over that funding to 2012–13, as federal officials had already suggested. Districts had already submitted applications for more than 50 schools, but they will have to wait to reapply for the competitive grants.
Parent Empowerment, Common Core
The State Board also authorized a third public comment period on a consensus draft of permanent regulations implementing the Parent Empowerment Act, which allows parents of students in academically underperforming schools to petition for implementation of reforms similar to those in the SIG program. Unless significant issues emerge before the comment period closes in early August, the regulations will go to the Office of Administrative Law for final review.
“These regulations are important to get this program moving,” CSBA’s Hoffmann told the State Board in encouraging final action on the consensus draft, which CSBA helped develop.
On Common Core State Standards in English-language arts and math, CDE staff gave the State Board the first in a planned series of updates since the board’s August 2010 adoption of the standards that have now been embraced by nearly every state. A staff report cited “two significant challenges for implementation”: the State Board’s adoption of “a dual set of mathematics standards” for California in grade 8 and its omission of “college and career readiness anchor standards” that were part of the package developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
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