School Improvement Grant Report Revised, Still Shows One-Third Of Schools' Scores Decreased
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After an outside contractor bungled an analysis of a major federal school turnaround program, the U.S. Department of Education has issued corrected results -- and they're not much better.
Like the previous one, the new report shows that about one-third of schools in the program decreased their proficiency rates, and slightly less than two-thirds of schools showed an increase. But there were small changes between the two reports, too. The initial November 2013 report on School Improvement Grants found that in reading, 45 percent of students at schools in their second year in the grant program were proficient, up from 40 percent two years earlier. According to the corrected report, 46 percent of those schools were proficient, up from a starting point of 43 percent two years earlier.
But it's too early for the numbers to be conclusive. Since the comparisons rely on school-wide proficiency rates weighted by the number of test takers, they don't account for changes in the characteristics of student populations (though they have been adjusted to account for population size).
School Improvement Grants, a signature program of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, has poured about $5.9 billion into more than 1,500 schools. Duncan put the program at the center of his efforts to turn "around the bottom 5 percent" of the nation's schools. The program allows schools to choose from four models: closing schools; turning schools over to a charter school management organization; shifting evaluation and curriculum; or replacing some staff. Duncan has said he hopes these