The School Improvement Grant Program Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Descriptive Overview of the Policy and Study Sample

• In Event: Schools’ Experiences With School Improvement Grants (SIGs): First-Year Results From SIG Case Studies

Abstract

The study to be discussed in the proposed symposium is examining the school improvement process in a diverse sample of schools receiving School Improvement Grants (SIG) under Title I, Section 1003(g) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) from 2010–11 through 2012–13. Authorized as a small school assistance program in 2001, the SIG program underwent three shifts with the passage of ARRA in 2009. First, ARRA targeted funds to a much smaller segment of low-performing schools: those schools that were in the bottom 5 percent of performance and had been low performing over an extended period of time. Second, the SIG program limited the acceptable reform options in these schools to a prescribed set of four intervention models (Turnaround, Transformation, Restart, Closure) believed to be more aggressive and comprehensive than those generally adopted under prior policies. Finally, to ensure adequate resources for the desired turnaround in performance, ARRA provided for nearly a fivefold increase in annual SIG funding over the three years covered by ARRA compared with the period before ARRA. To provide context for the papers and discussion that follow, this first presentation will provide an overview of the SIG policy and characteristics of SIG schools, and discuss the sampling methods and resulting sample for the case study schools.
First, we will provide an introduction to the SIG policy, including the grant requirements, characteristics of SIG schools, and the distribution of reform models chosen by schools. Drawing on a national database of SIG schools, this paper will also present annual SIG appropriations by year and by state, average award by intervention model, and the estimated percentage increase in annual per-pupil funding from SIG for SIG-awarded schools, by state. The paper will include data on schools awarded grants in Cohort I of SIG (for which the first year of SIG was 2010-11) and Cohort II of SIG (for which year 1 of SIG was 2011-12).
Second, we will discuss the rationale and procedures for identifying a sample of 25 core case study schools. The case study schools were purposively selected from six states to ensure representation of schools from different intervention models (excluding the SIG school closure model), schooling levels (elementary and high school only), and geographic regions; and schools with varied per-pupil and SIG funding levels. In addition to describing the general characteristics of the sampled schools, we will describe the fiscal context of these schools and the external context. That is, while some schools were in settings that could be described as relatively benign, others were situated in an environment characterized by violence and instability.
Understanding this variation will provide a backdrop for the papers that follow. While descriptive, this paper provides critical information for understanding the SIG program and provides important context for the subsequent papers in the symposium.

Author

• Steven Hurlburt, American Institutes for Research