Problems plague School Improvement Grant program
State Board cracks down on current recipients, delays new round of awards
Published: July 25, 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.
“It’s a mess,” CSBA Principal Legislative Advocate Erika Hoffmann said following the State Board of Education’s action on the issue during its July 13-14 meeting, “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.