Question 2 (Part 2): How can the new Section 1003(g) School Improvement Fund regulations be best utilized to turn around challenged high schools?

Supporting Only the Most Rigorous Interventions

• Districts would be required to use SIGs to implement four specific interventions in the lowest-achieving schools intended to improve the management and effectiveness of those schools:

• Turnaround Model, which must include:

• Replacing the principal and least 50% of the staff;
• Adopting a new governance structure;
• Implementing a new or revised instructional program;
• Implementing strategies designed to recruit, place, and retain effective staff
• Providing ongoing, high-quality job embedded professional development designed to ensure staff members are equipped to facilitate effective teaching and learning;
• Promoting the continuous use of student data to inform and differentiate instruction to meet the needs of individual students;
• Establishing schedules and strategies that increase instructional time for students and time for collaboration and professional development for staff; and
• Providing appropriate social-emotional and community-oriented services and supports for students.

• Restart Model, which would require districts to close the school and reopen it under the management of a charter school operator, a charter management organization, or an educational management organization that has been selected through a rigorous peer review process.

• Restart schools would be required to admit, within the grades it serves, any former students who wish to attend.

• School Closure, which would require districts to close the school and enroll the students who attended the school in other, high-achieving schools within the district.
• Transformation Model, which would require districts to address four specific areas critical to transforming the lowest-achieving schools:

• Developing teacher and school leader effectiveness – districts must: a) use evaluations that are based in significant measure on student growth to improve teachers’ and school leaders’ performance; b) identify and reward school leaders, teachers, and other staff who improve student achievement outcomes and identify and remove those who do not; c) replace the principal who led the school prior to commencement of the transformation model; d) provide staff ongoing, high-quality, job-embedded professional development that is aligned with the school’s comprehensive instructional program and designed to ensure staff are equipped to facilitate effective teaching and learning and have the capacity to successfully implement school reform strategies; and e) implement strategies to recruit, place, and retain effective staff.
• Implementing comprehensive instructional reform strategies – districts must: a) use data to identify and implement comprehensive, research-based, instructional programs that are vertically aligned from one grade to the next as well as aligned with state academic standards; and b) promote the continuous use of individualized student data to inform and differentiate instruction to meet the needs of individual students.
• Extending learning time and creating community-oriented schools – districts must: a) provide more time for students to learn core academic content by expanding the school day, the school week, or the school year, or increasing instructional time for core academic subjects during the school day; b) provide more time for teachers to collaborate, including time for horizontal and vertical planning to improve instruction; c) provide more time or opportunities for enrichment activities for students; and d) provide ongoing mechanisms for family and community engagement.
• Providing operating flexibility and sustained support – districts must: a) give the school sufficient operating flexibility to implement fully a comprehensive approach to substantially improve student achievement outcomes; and b) ensure that the school receives ongoing, intensive technical assistance and related support from the district, the state, or a designated external lead partner organization.

• Districts would be required to serve each of its Tier I schools, unless the district demonstrates that it lacks sufficient capacity or sufficient school improvement funds to undertake one of the four proposed interventions in each such school.
• Districts would be required to include in their application a budget indicating the amount of funds needed for each Tier I, Tier II, or Tier III school the districts commit to serve.
• In estimating costs, districts should consider such factors as the size of each school; whether the district plans to serve clusters of elementary schools that feed into Tier I or Tier II secondary schools; and whether the schools to be served are elementary, middle, or high schools.
• Districts’ total grant awards would contain funds for each Title I school in improvement, corrective action, or restructuring that the districts intend to serve, including $500,000 per year for each Tier I school that will implement a turnaround, restart, or transformation model.
• The Department of Education would waive the period of availability of school improvement funds beyond September 30, 2011 so as to make those funds available to districts for three years.
• Districts would be required to establish three-year student achievement goals in reading/language arts and mathematics; and districts would hold each Tier I and Tier II school accountable for meeting, or being on track to meet, those goals.
• States must renew districts’ SIGs for two additional one-year periods if the LEA demonstrates that its Tier I and Tier II schools are meeting, or on track to meeting, the districts’ student achievement goals; if a state does not renew a district’s SIG because the participating schools are not on track to meeting their student achievement goals, the state may reallocate those funds to other eligible districts.

Reporting Metrics

• States and districts would be required to report specific school-level data related to the use of school improvement funds and the impact of the specific interventions implemented.
• The Department of Education proposes to collect data in three general categories:

• Interventions – the interventions being used by the district;
• Leading Indicators – instructional minutes per school year and teacher attendance; and
• Student Achievement Outcomes – average scale scores on state assessments (disaggregated by subgroup) and the number of students enrolled in advanced coursework.

• Districts would be encouraged to conduct an analysis of Tier I and Tier II schools and the districts’ ability to implement the proposed interventions; review student achievement outcomes; evaluate current policies and practices that may support or impede successful reform strategies; assess the strengths and weaknesses of school leaders, teachers, and other school staff; recruit and train principals with the needed skills to lead a school that would implement one of the proposed interventions; screen and identify necessary external partners; and design a multi-pronged strategy for changing the school culture and reforming the lowest-achieving schools.