The U.S. Department of Education today announced more than $427 million in School Improvement Grants (SIG) to help turn around America’s persistently lowest-achieving schools in every state and U.S. territory.
"When the President entered office he laid out an ambitious agenda to transform our lowest performing schools as a means of improving outcomes for all students, but especially those who most need additional support, said U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. “We are seeing the impact of SIG and other initiatives through historic increases in high school graduation rates and narrowed achievement gaps in public schools, which ultimately translate to better opportunities for all student to succeed. We have made significant progress but the job is not done yet and efforts like SIG will keep us moving in the right direction.”
Robert Balfanz, senior research scientist at Johns Hopkins University who has been honored as a White House “Champion of Change” for his efforts to further education among African Americans, echoed Secretary King’s remarks. Balfanz said, “Turning around low-performing schools is difficult work. The SIG program has provided urgency and resources to providing our most vulnerable students with the schools they need to succeed. It’s heartening to see the impact it has had and how key lessons learned have been incorporated into (the Every School Succeeds Act).”
The Department awards grants to states, which then award competitive subgrants to school districts that demonstrate the greatest need for the funds and the strongest commitment to substantially raising student achievement in the lowest-performing schools. States are also given flexibility to develop their own state-determined intervention model that focuses on whole-school reform and is designed to improve student achievement. In schools that have received funds under this program up to 80 percent of students are from low income families, 28 percent higher than the average school.
While turning around chronically low-performing schools, which have been failing students for decades and possibly generations, is some of the hardest and most important work in education and progress has not been universal, data show that SIG schools are improving faster than other schools, including gains in mathematics and reading proficiency and improved graduation rates. These efforts helped contribute to a decline in dropout rates, and over the last decade, dropout rates have been cut dramatically for Latino and African American students, while the number of high schools where fewer than six in ten students graduate on time has been cut by more than 40 percent. Among the first three cohorts of high schools that received support though SIG increases in graduation rates out-paced the national average and last week President Obama announced that America’s high school graduation rate reached a record new high 83.2 percent.
Since 2009, the SIG program has invested over $7 billion to transform more than 1,800 of the country’s lowest performing schools. While this is the last year that the Department will award funds under the current program, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), continues this work. Consistent with the Administration’s SIG program, ESSA requires that States identify and support the lowest-performing schools, including schools that are failing to graduate one third or more of their students or where subgroups of students are falling behind, and to implement evidence-based interventions to turn around these schools. To support this critical work, ESSA also requires that States set aside funds under Title I specifically for these schools to invest in activities that we know support low-performing students and low-achieving schools, similar to SIG.
State
Allocation
Alabama
$6,759,794
Alaska
$1,378,286
Arizona
$9,477,879
Arkansas
$4,500,635
California
$53,561,566
Colorado
$4,458,972
Connecticut
$3,518,824
Delaware
$1,354,247
District of Columbia
$1,256,386
Florida
$23,856,494
Georgia
$14,999,007
Hawaii
$1,560,548
Idaho
$1,744,266
Illinois
$18,994,896
Indiana
$7,388,921
Iowa
$2,737,778
Kansas
$3,452,059
Kentucky
$6,245,629
Louisiana
$8,304,495
Maine
$1,518,333
Maryland
$6,332,447
Massachusetts
$6,639,850
Michigan
$13,514,481
Minnesota
$4,740,771
Mississippi
$5,041,056
Missouri
$6,791,782
Montana
$1,319,568
Nebraska
$2,139,063
Nevada
$3,447,309
New Hampshire
$1,239,772
New Jersey
$9,824,640
New Mexico
$3,170,939
New York
$32,658,759
North Carolina
$12,308,102
North Dakota
$1,039,904
Ohio
$16,304,274
Oklahoma
$4,577,143
Oregon
$4,433,869
Pennsylvania
$16,542,248
Puerto Rico
$10,988,998
Rhode Island
$1,442,735
South Carolina
$6,893,468
South Dakota
$1,284,777
Tennessee
$8,615,752
Texas
$40,674,352
Utah
$2,593,114
Vermont
$1,014,728
Virginia
$7,555,337
Washington
$6,925,892
Wisconsin
$6,181,795
American Samoa
$341,999
Guam
$480,926
Northern Marianas
$206,721
Virgin Islands
$267,628
Bureau of Indian Education
$2,896,786
Total
$427,500,000