PPT Slide
What is School Improvement?
Title I spells out the process states must undertake to improve schools which continue to perform poorly. After a school fails to make adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years, the district must put the school into "school improvement." With parents, the district, and a state support team - designed to help schools in need of improvement - schools in improvement must design a school program to enable all students to meet standards. Districts must provide increased levels of technical assistance to schools in improvement and such schools must spend 10% of one year's Title I allocation on professional development over the course of two years. All of this intervention must be focused on improving student achievement. If after three years, schools are still failing to make progress, states must take "corrective action" - including for example, reconstitution of school staff, school closure, or withholding funds. (20 U.S.C. § 6317).
Over the past year, the growing concern and discourse about holding schools accountable has reached near-crescendo levels. On both sides of the aisle in Washington and across the United States, federal and state legislators are proposing new ways of helping poor-performing schools-- and ultimately the students attending them --if the schools fail to get better over time. As a result, chronically poor-performing schools risk closure, reconstitution, or receivership.
In many ways, federal law helped catalyze this movement. Title I of the Elementary and secondary Education Act, amended in 1994 by the Improving America's Schools Ad (IASA), requires that districts and states take action against chronically poor-performing schools, first by putting them in school improvement, and ultimately by taking corrective action against them if they continue to fail. The Title I notion of accountability provides a framework for states to create accountability systems that serve the needs of the students in those states. Though extremely flexible (allowing for as many different approaches as there are states), it provides some basic principles to which states must adhere if they accept federal Title I funds.